“Fuck, stop!” Drew’s screams grew louder and more desperate. “I can’t take anymore. You’re going to kill me!”
If Bryce wouldn’t or couldn’t get Drew out of the prison in his mind, he didn’t deserve him. I reached for the knob and stormed in, reminding myself that I had to stay calm for Drew’s sake. The last thing I expected to see was Bryce hovering over Drew, rubbing his jaw and looking utterly helpless.
“Don’t just stand there,” I seethed. “We have to wake him up.”
“I tried,” Bryce hissed, taking a step away from the edge of the bed when Drew lashed out in his direction. “As soon as I touched him and said his name, he started swinging, telling me to get the fuck away from him.”
I sat at the edge of the bed and tentatively reached out to run my hand down Drew’s back. It had worked the previous nights, but he also hadn’t been combative then. The dreams were getting worse.
I looked up and saw Bryce watching Drew’s body visibly relax as I continued whispering to him that he was okay and that he was safe now. I was to blame for the sadness in Bryce’s eyes. I was the one who’d pushed him to reach out to Drew, and now Drew had punched Bryce for touching him while instantly calming for me. I couldn’t imagine how much that had to sting.
“I’m going to go,” Bryce informed me as he started gathering his clothes from the floor on his side of the bed.
“Don’t.” Both of us stopped and looked down at Drew, who was now awake with his body curled around the pillow. He reached back with one hand to make sure I was still there while also reaching for Bryce. “I don’t know what happened, but I don’t want you to leave, Bryce.”
The sliver of light from the hallway was enough to highlight the struggle in Bryce’s eyes. His shoulders sagged forward and I realized he was as powerless to resist Drew as I was.
“Do you remember what you were dreaming about?” Bryce asked as he took a seat on the other side of the bed. Drew was holding onto both of us as though we were his lifelines.
Drew nodded slightly, looking embarrassed over the fact that he was still haunted by the attack. I continued rubbing Drew’s back, knowing that he was going to be upset when he realized he’d hit Bryce. He might be cocky and a bit self-centered at times, but that didn’t mean he was cold and heartless.
“What made you lash out at Bryce?” I asked, knowing we needed to get past this before anyone could get some sleep.
“I don’t know,” Drew admitted. He shifted on the queen-sized bed so he was seated between us. “I didn’t realize I had until I woke up and my hand hurt like hell.”
“It’s okay,” Bryce assured him. “You didn’t break anything and I should have known better than to touch you when you didn’t know where you were.”
“Would you stop doing that?” Drew shouted. The outburst startled both of us, but it was a good sign that something had finally gotten a strong reaction out of him. Until now, I’d been worried he was going to keep bottling everything up in favor of just being a grumpy asshole all the time. He needed to let this out. “You can’t keep letting me off the hook every time I do something to you. Maybe you should leave. I’m all fucked up and not any good for anyone right now.”
Bryce looked up at me and I couldn’t do anything more than shrug. He was the one who was accustomed to dealing with this type of shit, not me. It was one of the reasons I figured Bryce would be better for Drew than I could ever dream of being.
“Drew, I’m not giving you a free pass,” Bryce informed him. “My jaw hurts like hell and I’m probably going to have one hell of a bruise in the morning. But it really isn’t your fault. You’re trying to get past what happened to you and it’s going to take time. Have you thought anymore about talking to someone?”
I bristled, remembering how it’d gone over every time any of us had mentioned the idea of therapy to Drew. Even Stu had suggested that it might be a good idea, but Drew was adamant that he didn’t need a shrink. It was becoming clearer every day that he was wrong about that.
“We’re talking right now,” Drew responded curtly.
“But you need someone who will be able to help you. Eric and I can listen, but neither of us are going to be able to give you the tools you need to get better,” Bryce countered. While Drew still seemed opposed to the idea, at least he was listening to what Bryce had to say. That was more than the rest of us had accomplished. “You need someone who you don’t see outside of your appointments so you can bitch to them about the stupid shit your friends do when they’re trying to help you.”
The way Bryce looked up at me as he spoke stung. It was as if he was implying that I was part of the reason Drew wasn’t getting any better. That may not have been the case at all, but it’s how it seemed.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Drew argued. “What’s pissing me off the most is the fact that everyone keeps trying to get me to talk about that night, as if that’ll do anything to make it better. It won’t. If anything, it’ll just piss me off even more because I don’t remember what happened.”
I wanted to pull Bryce out of the bedroom and speak to him in private. I was starting to understand what Drew’s biggest issue was now that he was healing physically, and I had a feeling I could help him work through this. The problem was I didn’t know if it’d do a damn bit of good for either one of us to sit down and rehash everything. I sure as fuck didn’t want to sit down and try to fill in the blanks, but I was willing to do just about anything to help Drew.
“Drew, why don’t you get dressed and meet us down in the rec room?” I suggested. The bedroom wasn’t the place to continue this conversation, and being in the bed with both of them was seriously fucking with my mind. Every time I took a deep breath to calm myself, I caught a faint hint of musk and sweat, no doubt caused by whatever they’d been doing in here earlier. “We’ll talk about whatever you want, but this bed isn’t big enough for the three of us.”
Drew looked from me to Bryce and back again. And then, he did something he hadn’t done in a long time. He actually laughed. “Yeah, this isn’t exactly the way I wanted to have both of you in bed with me. If you want to get some sleep, we don’t have to talk anymore tonight. And Bryce, if you’ll stay, I promise I won’t try to knock you out again.”
“I think Eric is right,” Bryce added, carefully avoiding the comment about Drew hitting him. “You need to talk about what happened and I have a feeling Eric’s the one who’s going to be able to help you the most. He was there. And even if he won’t admit it to you, I have a feeling he’s plagued by a lot of the same memories you are.”
I opened my mouth to disagree, but I couldn’t. The whole reason I was awake when Drew had his meltdown was because of my own dreams. Drew needed to know that as well. Maybe knowing that he wasn’t the only person struggling to get past what’d happened would help him realize he wasn’t as fucked up as he thought he was.
I left Bryce to get dressed and walked into the kitchen to get him an ice pack for his face. Drew might not like seeing it, but Bryce was going to be hurting in the morning and I wanted to make sure his face wasn’t any more swollen than it already was.
Bryce followed me down the stairs to the basement. The silence between us was awkward. I offered him a drink, which he quickly declined. Fuck that. If we were going to do this, I wanted something and I wanted it to be the good stuff. I sat on the opposite end of the couch from Bryce, leaving the couch open in case Drew wanted a bit of space from us. When I looked up, I noticed Bryce watching me swirl the whiskey around in my glass.
“Look, I’m sorry about tonight,” I apologized. I was beginning to realize that while I had good intentions, it was wrong of me to push anyone to do something before they were ready. It was a character flaw of mine to want the best for everyone, even when it killed me emotionally.