Total pages in book: 132
Estimated words: 124923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 416(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 416(@300wpm)
“My mom left, too. I’ve always had trouble sleeping, even before then. For as long as I can remember. According to my her, I’d wake up the whole house with my crying. At first, she thought I was awake because my eyes were open, and I’d be standing in the corner of my room, screaming at the top of my lungs. Scared her so bad she took me to the pediatrician. They said it was normal. Just night terrors that are common for that age and that I’d grow out of them. It got better as I got older, but after my mom left, my sleep got worse again.” Her hand squeezes mine, letting me know she’s listening.
“Danny used to calm me down in the middle of the night. He taught me to change the channel in my mind, like a TV. He said whenever I was having a bad dream, I could switch to the next channel and watch something else.”
“Did it work?”
“Sometimes. I think it helped me fall asleep knowing I could try, more than anything else. Trying to control my dreams became a game to me, and eventually, they tapered off altogether. Then Danny died and they came back with a vengeance.”
“And now?”
“They come and go. Sometimes, I’ll go months without a single dream, good or bad. Then something will happen to trigger one. Sometimes it’s obvious. Sometimes it’s something that I didn’t even realize affected me.”
“Like this thing with your uncle? It’s understandable, you know. For all of this to stir up feelings about Danny. Not having closure with Christian. It’s fucked up.”
I nod in the dark, even though she can’t see me.
She fidgets with my fingers on the hand splayed across her stomach. “That thing you said about changing the channel. It reminded me of something my psychology professor said. He said animals don’t suffer from PTSD like humans do.”
I tense up at the direction this conversation seems to be heading, but if she notices, she doesn’t let on.
“In the wild, animals deal with stress and fear every day. They feel it, process it, release it, and move on. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t survive long. Humans…we stifle our emotions. Then we wonder why we’re condemned to reliving shit in our dreams.”
“Yeah, well, lucky for me, your pussy seems to be the cure for nightmares,” I say, bringing my hand to cup between her thighs. She lets out a raspy laugh, sending an elbow into my chest, but then her fingers curl around my forearm, allowing my hand to stay where it’s nice and warm.
“There he is. You were almost civilized for an entire evening.”
“There was nothing civilized about what we just did,” I say to add some much-needed levity.
“As I was saying,” she says, ignoring my attempt at derailing the conversation. “I think…” she trails off, hesitating for a second before deciding to continue. “I think whatever you avoid in your life manifests as nightmares. Have you ever really processed Danny’s death? And Christian was like your brother, too. You lost both of them. You’re allowed to miss him, even if you hate him for what he did.”
My lips skim across her bare shoulder as I think back to the night Christian finally confessed. How I stood there, frozen in my shock. Thayer got to yell. Thayer got to hurt him. Then he disappeared upstairs with Shayne, Valen left with her douchebag boyfriend, and I was left alone to try to make sense of it all. When I thought Christian ran, it was easy to hate him. Part of me still hates him, not only for what he did, but for keeping it from us as long as he did. But now, knowing something might have happened to him and we sat here doing nothing for an entire year? The guilt has been slowly chipping away at me and burning a hole in my resolve to hate him.
“Anyway, all of that to say if changing the channel ever isn’t enough…you can always talk to me. If you think it would help, I mean.”
I press a kiss to her shoulder, unable to find the words.
We’re both quiet, and I can only assume she’s lost in her thoughts like I am. I don’t know what’s going to happen with Valen and me, but the longer this goes on, the harder it’s going to be to let her go. I don’t know how much time has passed when her breathing starts to deepen, telling me she’s falling asleep. I close my eyes, my limbs feeling heavy as sleep starts to pull me under.
“Thank you,” she whispers into the dark, sounding like she’s on the brink of sleep.
“For what?”
“For pretending to love me.”
I lift my head off the pillow to look down at her. The TV gives off just enough light to see that her eyes are closed. I take a minute to study her pretty features. Her long, dark lashes fanned out across the top of her cheeks, the shape of her pillowy lips. The tiny beauty mark on the side of her neck. The ice princess is beautiful, but when she’s like this, in my bed and in my arms, she feels like mine. Whether she realizes it or not, she is.