Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 130758 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 654(@200wpm)___ 523(@250wpm)___ 436(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130758 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 654(@200wpm)___ 523(@250wpm)___ 436(@300wpm)
I blinked through my tears at his words. I couldn’t surrender to them. I wouldn’t.
I sucked in a breath. It was choked and strangled as the very air around me seemed to scrape the sides of my throat as it traveled down my lungs. Existing was hard, impossible, when the mere act of breathing clean air was excruciating. I blinked up at him, the man in front of me who’d haunted my nightmares. Who I promised myself would only exist in my nightmares.
“I don’t sleep,” I whispered.
He jolted and his face was a contortion of agony.
“And when I do, when my body loses its fight with exhaustion after a couple days, they come,” I continued. “The nightmares.” I looked up, to escape his eyes and in an attempt to force the tears threatening the corners of my eyes back where they came from. It was a long moment of silence before I found the strength to lower my gaze once more. “Though nightmares isn’t the best description. Nightmares aren’t real. You wake up from them and thank whatever you pray to that they exist only in the land of darkness and night.” I sucked in another mouthful of glass. “These are real. And they don’t leave me when I wake up. They’re always there. Always.”
As if he were unable to hear this anymore, he stepped forward. Like I’d coordinated it, I stepped back just as quickly. It was hard enough to get oxygen into me with him in the same room. I wouldn’t be able to do it if I could smell him. Taste him. He didn’t try to move forward again, but every inch of him was etched in stone.
“You’re in my nightmares,” I choked out. “Always. You’re always there, surrounded by the filth, elbow-deep in it. Saving me. You already did that. It’s done. I’m saved. You can sleep easy. At least one of us can. So you need to stop trying to save me, ’cause this is as close as it’s going to get. Leave.” The last word was a prayer.
Gabriel looked at me. Branded me with his gaze. It wasn’t comfortable, or enticing, or full of desire. It rubbed me the wrong way, like sandpaper on the psyche, with the depth of fucking sorrow in it.
“Sleep easy,” he repeated, his voice gravel. “I haven’t had a moment of fucking peace or easy since I woke up in that hospital room and learned that you were gone.” His fists clenched at his sides. “My nightmare, firefly, was being strapped to a fucking table while unable to go to you. Chained up while you were…. That’s what I’ll live with. What’ll keep me up at night. Every night for the rest of my life. So the only fucking way I’ll ever sleep easy if you’re next to me, and when I get shaken awake by my own nightmares, I’ll have you in my arms to chase them away.”
There it was. Him, basically begging at my feet. Offering me something I’d dreamed about since the moment I was lucid enough to realize my nightmare was never going away. Safety. He was offering me himself. Even though he knew what had gone on those three weeks. What they did to me. And he still wanted me. Or thought he did.
He wouldn’t. Not once he saw how deep the dirt went. How fucking shattered I was.
I didn’t even want me.
“I can’t chase away your nightmares,” I choked out. “I’m too busy with my own. Now, I need you to leave.”
He stared at me, and for one horrible moment I thought he wouldn’t leave. That he’d stay and I’d lose the battle I was waging with myself, take him up on his offer. That I’d cling to his fucking leg and never let go.
He rubbed at his head like I knew he did when he was frustrated. “Baby, I know you’ve been through—”
“You have no fucking idea what I’ve been through!” I shrieked, interrupting him. I tried so hard to sound strong, but my words seemed to break as I said them. I seemed to break.
Gabriel stepped forward and I scuttled back against the wall. He frowned at the distance between us, obviously wanting to close it, but he must’ve seen something in me because he stayed rooted, his hands balled into fists at the sides.
“You’re right, firefly. I have no idea what you’ve been through,” he began quietly. “I only know what I’ve been through. The deepest depths of hell I’ve been living in, suffering in, for the past two months. The pain that seems to kill me, but somehow I keep breathing. The anger that I can’t swallow no matter what. That’s all I know, Becky.” He paused, his eyes never leaving mine. “I know all that shit, what I’m feeling, is nothing on what you’re battling. That what I feel is a drop in the fuckin’ bucket compared to your pain. I can’t understand how something can be worse than what I’m going through. The living hell. It makes me sick, physically sick to my stomach to know that’s what you’re feeling, what you’re living.” He couldn’t seem to stop himself anymore, closing the distance between us so he framed my face with his hands. I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t move. If my words had broken me before, his touch shattered me. Destroyed what was left.