Besides, there was no telling what Rinaldo had planned for me when I was released on bond. He could exile me again.
I felt fingers against my arm and opened my eyes to find Lia had moved from her seat to stand on the left side of the chair where I was chained. Her fingers traced up my forearm, and I shivered as I took in another deep breath.
With her touch on my arm, and my inability to return it, my head began to swim again, and the fog inside my mind felt like it was trying to push me to the ground and suffocate me. Her presence and contact should have soothed me, but I needed more.
“I wish I could touch you. I need to touch you.”
Lia stepped to one side and shoved the table back a little with her hip. She positioned herself so that her leg was right in front of my hand.
I reached out and wrapped my fingers around her thigh. Sitting up and leaning forward, I pressed the side of my face against her stomach. The touch of her fingers on the back of my neck and scalp as she cradled my head to her body was alarming. The warm, dark feeling of near unconsciousness from lack of sleep seeped into me again, replacing the fog, but I pushed it off as I inhaled her familiar scent and let the emotions cover me.
She saw me.
She saw me like that—rifle in hand, firing at strangers in a park. She saw me in cuffs, being hauled away like a deranged lunatic.
I was a deranged lunatic.
My body started shaking, and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. It all came out as I pressed my face against her belly and let go—allowing the shaking to turn into sobbing. The haunted looks of those I had killed just before my bullet entered their brains, the bodies of my unit as I was taken prisoner, the sounds of those who begged me to show mercy.
I never did.
“It wasn't always this way,” I cried into her shirt. “I wasn't supposed to be like this.”
“What happened?” I heard her whisper.
I shook my head from side to side, still pressing tightly against her body. Though there was a little part of me that might have wanted to go for full disclosure—everything from my profession to the slaying of the woman I slept with—most of me wasn’t anywhere near that stupid. Even in my current state, I wasn’t going to say anything to make her run screaming from the room. That was what she would have done if I had told her everything.
No doubt about it.
Without the ability to tell her all of it, I had to go with the basic, high-level view of the situation.
“I can’t…I can’t sleep,” I finally said.
“Why not?”
“The dreams.”
“Tell me what you dream about,” she said softly.
I turned my head to gaze up at her. I didn’t know what I saw there, but I knew it wasn’t just morbid curiosity or nosiness.
“I was a POW,” I told her.
She nodded, and there was no surprise contained within her eyes.
“I know,” she replied. “I read about it. Is that what you dream about?”
“Most of the time,” I said. Flashes of Bridgett’s body on the ground flickered in my brain, and I bit down on my lip to stop myself from blurting it out. “I usually dream about being tied up and shoved into a hole in the ground. And the sand. Just constant, fucking sand.”
“How long has it been since you’ve slept?”
I shrugged and shook my head. I had no idea.
“I can’t sleep by myself,” I said. “It’s been…a while.”
“By yourself?” Lia asked. “But you can sleep if someone is with you?”
Whirling nausea swirled in my stomach. I hadn’t meant to say anything about it at all, and now she was likely to press for a better answer. What would I even tell her? I do my best sleeping after a little anal with a hooker? Oh, by the way, I might have shot her when the mood struck me.
How about a nice night on the town?
“I guess,” I said quietly. My heartbeat pounded in my temples as I started to sweat due to the energy it was taking not to tell her what happened.
Lia’s fingers trailed slowly over the side of my face.
“If I was with you, would you be able to sleep?”
The feeling that came over me at the very idea could have easily knocked me to the floor if I hadn’t already been secured to the metal chair. My fingers tightened on her thigh as the reality of the situation hit me.
If I had just held out another day—maybe even another hour—I could be sleeping with her right now. I could be in my bed with Lia in my arms and Odin making disgusting saliva trails on my arm when I overslept.
I’d fucked it all up.
“Shit…shit…shit…”
“Evan!”
“So fucked up…”
“I know,” she said with a rush of air from her lungs. “It’s as fucked up as anything ever has been.”
“It’s worse,” I responded. I squeezed my eyes shut and considered biting down on my tongue.
There’s a rush of blood into my throat just after a sharp blow to my chin causes me to bite down on my tongue. For a moment I think I’m choking on my own blood, but once I manage to swallow, I can breathe again. My tongue throbs in my mouth…
“Evan?”
As my thoughts were interrupted, my lungs started screaming at me to fill them up with some air before I passed out face-first on the table. I tried to inhale but couldn’t and started to panic.
The blood in my mouth mixes with the sand as I’m thrown back to the ground, and for a moment I am choking on it…
“Evan, stay with me.”
“Can’t breathe.”
“Calm, baby.” Her fingers traced the edge of my jaw. “Just listen to my voice, and take a slow breath.”
I wanted to listen to her badly enough that I forced my diaphragm to flex and pull air into my lungs in a sharp gasp.
“It’s okay.” Lia’s voice pulled me from the panic the same way it had managed to pull me from the memory. “It’s all right, Evan… You’re all right.”
With nearly violent effort, I inhaled again. The act itself nearly made me fall out of the chair. I wondered if it was the restraints or Lia’s touch that was keeping me from landing on the floor. After a few more tries and a lot of focus on her skin against mine, I managed to start breathing normally again.
“Where did you go?” Lia’s fingers continued to run from my temple to my chin.
“Back there,” I responded. I swallowed past the growing tightness in my throat before continuing. “When they first tried to put me in the hole, I’d struggle. It was stupid—there were too many of them to fight.”
“But you kept trying.”
“For a while.” I nodded. “Eventually, I figured out there wasn’t any point. Once I didn’t respond that way anymore to whatever they were doing, they’d try to come up with other ways to get a reaction out of me.”
“Shit,” Lia whispered as her arms tensed. “You were there a long time, too.”
I could only nod. Squeezing my eyes shut, I tried to keep the memories shoved to the back of my mind, but I was really too tired for such an act of will. They were going to be back—with force. My hands began to shake uncontrollably, and I gripped Lia’s thigh a little harder.
“Evan, it will be all right.” Her voice echoed around the small room. “We'll figure it out. I'll help you figure it out.”
I laughed. It was hollow and without humor.
“Figure it out,” I repeated sarcastically. “I shot up my neighborhood park. I'm going to prison. I should go to prison.”