like we could almost be friends.
And I would be okay with that. I mean, sure I’d have liked more. I’d have liked to get buried by more, to get rawed by more. To deepthroat whatever more Holden wanted to give me.
But as he banked the fire a few hours later and turned to give me a warm, unguarded smile, I reminded myself that sometimes, you didn’t need more.
Sometimes you just needed enough.
“You sure you’re okay?” Holden said, coming back from the fireplace. “No toes you can’t feel or gaping wounds you’re hiding under those blankets.”
I smiled back, determined to be happy with enough, and not to make any jokes about things on my body that could gape, or how he was welcome to check under my blankets if he didn’t believe me.
“Yeah. I’m sure.” I looked over at the bed. “I can sleep on the floor tonight, if you want to take the cot.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ll sleep on the floor. You’re the one who might have hypothermia.”
“That just means I’m already used to the cold,” I said. “No reason for you to subject yourself to it too.”
“I’ve got my parka. I’ll be fine.”
“That still doesn’t seem right.”
“Well, I don’t see an alternative, unless you want to—I mean, I wouldn’t want you to feel like you—that is, it’s a narrow cot, and you shouldn’t have to—”
“Holden, are you trying to suggest that we could share the bed?”
I laughed. I didn’t mean to, but something about the way he got flustered was so, well, adorable.
“No, I wasn’t—I mean, I would never—”
“Dude, I’m not a Victorian maiden or anything. I’m not gonna be scandalized, and you don’t have to protect my honor.”
“I just don’t want you to be uncomfortable.”
“Trust me, I’d be more uncomfortable if I knew you were sleeping on the floor because of me. I think I’ll survive.”
And I did. I managed to remove all but one of the blankets around me without flashing Holden, and gave them to him to put back on the bed. I managed to climb underneath the covers. I managed to lie there next to him, his mouth inches from mine.
I managed all of that without awkwardly propositioning him or just attacking him with my mouth, which I thought showed great restraint on my part. I did need to roll over onto my other side, though, and face away from him. Just to remove some of the temptation.
“Hey,” Holden said, his voice feather-soft as I began to turn. “No more running away, okay? Promise?”
“Promise.”
I fell asleep with a smile on my face.
I don’t know how long I slept without dreaming, or dreaming normal things, but eventually the nightmare came back. Like it did every night. Without fail.
I was back on the boat, in the closet, and the man with the hatchet face leaned in close, his breath warm and rancid on my cheeks. I kicked out, flailing as his hands closed around my neck, and wrenched myself free.
I wriggled around him and out into the too-bright hallway beyond the closet. A set of stairs appeared, wavering like a mirage, at one end of the hall and I hurled myself towards them. I could hear the man behind me, lumbering to his feet, and I scrabbled up the stairs and out onto the deck with a lurch as the boat heaved drunkenly to one side.
I looked left and right across the storm-swept boat. It looked simultaneously foreign and familiar, but I couldn’t see a damn place to hide. Even knowing, as I somehow did, that this was a dream, I didn’t want the man from the closet to catch up with me, couldn’t bear the crushing heat of his hands on my throat.
The ocean roiled around the boat. Rain lashed down in sheets, and as the boat dipped down into the trough of a wave, I fell forward, stumbling and sliding towards the railing that ran along the edge.
When I turned around, the man from the closet was halfway across the deck. He moved in unnatural jumps, fuzzing out of existence only to pop up again closer to me a second later. Rage rolled off him.
When he was five feet away, the door at the top of the steps slammed open again, and a new figure slid out onto the deck.
My heart stopped.
Forget the man with the hatchet face, forget his fingers like talons and his sewage breath, forget the fear that pumped through my veins like gasoline when I looked at him. It all paled