when I realized that the night terrors weren’t gone. Pierce is out of town, and I stay at my apartment with Buster. He’s the one who wakes me up. I pet him, and he stays with me for the remainder of the night. It happens three nights in a row. On the fourth one, Pierce is the one who wakes me up.
“It’s okay, you’re with me,” I hear.
In my dream, I see him carrying me away from the house. I’m not a kid, but I’m bleeding and hurting like when I was six. He begs the paramedics to save me. He begs me to stay with him. My eyes open, and I’m tangled in his arms.
“Breathe, Ley,” he whispers. “Inhale, one, two, three…then exhale slowly for me.”
He kisses my nose and says, “Bad dream?”
I just rest my head against his chest. The steady sound of his heartbeat calms me. I breathe a sigh of relief. I’m not sure what I hate more, that the night terrors are back or that he knows about them.
“Why are you here and not in my bed?” he whispers, pressing me closer to his body.
“Because you’re not in town?” I mumble, absorbing his masculine scent. How I missed the strong woodsy aroma of his. Little by little I start feeling whole again.
“Was that a nightmare or a night terror?” he asks.
“Isn’t that the same?”
“One of them is the result of PTSD,” he explains, and I sigh, closing my eyes.
“Can you trust me, Ley?”
There’s a knot forming in my throat because this is how it ends. I take a few deep breaths before I step away from his embrace and leave my bed.
“This has been fun,” I begin, smiling at him even though I think I’m dying a little.
“We can still have fun,” he interrupts.
“No. This situation changes everything,” I explain.
“Not from my perspective,” he insists.
“We’re not those kinds of people,” I remind him. “We hookup, have fun, and share a dog. That’s our dynamic. Our arrangement doesn’t go deeper than that. You established it.”
His intense gaze holds mine, and he says, “Our arrangement changes every day, Leyla. You can’t possibly think that this is casual. We’re a lot more than fuck buddies. Just because we don’t say it out loud, it doesn’t mean it’s not happening.”
He chimes a set of keys and continues, “We have each other’s house keys. Most of your clothes are at my place. At this point, I’m not even sure why we don’t officially live together.”
“We barely know each other.”
“You know everything about me,” he claims.
“What about your family?”
He frowns and clears his throat. “You already know what matters. I’m an only child to a single mother. We lived with my grandparents so they could help her raise me. Now, I choose to avoid them because my uncles and cousins are a bunch of assholes. Any other questions?”
“That’s all?”
He nods. “Everything else is unimportant. If I don’t talk about them it is because I’d just be complaining about how useless, incompetent, and stupid they are. Now, can we get back to you, please?”
“I’ll hate it when you look at me with pity. Heads up, this will be over,” I trace the scar on my arm.
“It wasn't an accident,” I confess. “My name is Leyla Faye Gibbs. My father was Justin Gibbs.”
He frowns and snaps his fingers. “Gibbs…where have I heard that word?”
“Gibbs department stores. They also owned a grocery store chain in the New England area,” I answer. “They changed their name fifteen years ago, but they used to be a household name.”
He nods. “I remember receiving presents from there. What happened to you, Leyla Gibbs?”
“We lived in a small town. Bristol, Maine,” I continue. “Dad was a raging alcoholic. I didn’t know that term when I was young. All I knew was that he was scary, and we had to be very quiet around him. Nights were the worst. We’d hear him yell at Mom, and the next morning, if he wasn’t careful enough, we could see where he hit her.”
My heart is hammering hard inside my chest. I want to stop, but I prefer to get it all out so he can leave now before I can’t live without him.
“Why did your mom stay?”
I shrug. “Probably for the same reason every woman who is abused stays. They can’t leave. They are afraid… There are so many factors involved. I’ve read a lot about it, trying to find an answer. What if she had done things differently? But you read