Page 29 of The Hangman's Rope

I got that.

I did.

Sometimes you just needed someone to tell you that you were safe, even if it was a lie.

Except in that moment, it wasn’t a platitude. It wasn’t an empty promise designed to just make her feel better.

No, I meant it. She was safe. Come Hell or high water. Come rich boys or my own boys – which yeah, I know that was saying a lot, but I meant it. She was safe here, with me, in my house. I wouldn’t hesitate to throw down. Sometimes, honestly, I was just looking for an excuse – which is generally why I kept to myself nowadays.

“It gets better, Sweetpea,” I promised; and I meant that too. No empty platitudes here. It did. I didn’t know if time necessarily healed all wounds, but it damn sure generally didn’t make them worse. Maybe it wasn’t so much healed ‘em as got you used to ‘em. I don’t know. All I knew was that tonight it didn’t really matter.

Words weren’t going to make the nightmares go away. Usually, only time did that. Maybe not even time chased them off but put them to sleep themselves. The terror wearing itself out to fall sleeping itself until this trigger or that thing poked them with a sharp stick waking them up, roaring and angry to wakeyouup all over again.

I sat with her in the quiet of the night until she’d stopped shuddering and shaking with her silent racking sobs.

“Okay, Sweetpea,” I said after she’d gone almost completely still. She raised her chin, and turned her head, to lay it atop her knee and look at me.

“Let’s get you tucked into bed properly,” I said. “You up for trying sleep again?”

She nodded and I got up, towing her up behind me by our hotly pressed together hands. I led her back into the bedroom and over to the side of the bed, pulling back the blankets for her to get in.

“What is that?” she asked, pointing to the suspension stand in the corner. I quirked a sardonic smile and told her; “Never you mind all that,” and I jiggled her hand toward the bed. She relinquished her hold and got in.

“There you go,” I tucked her in and it felt nice to do it. To care for someone.

I went to straighten up and she spoke quickly as though afraid to ask.

“Stay with me?”

I frowned.

“You sure?” I asked.

She nodded quickly.

I hesitated. In the front of my brain, I knew it was probably the wrong thing to do… but this funny feeling in the center of my chest had me sighing out and nodding my head in agreement.

“Move over,” I ordered gently and she did, scooting way over onto the other side of the bed.

I got onto it and eased myself down beside her, careful to stay atop the covers and keep that barrier at least.

I grunted when she quickly scooted back into me and laid her head on my chest, my arms held out at first as though she was something venomous or like contact with her skin would scorchmine… which the latter? Accurate, just not in the hellfire and brimstone sense of the word.

Desire rippled out through my body where her skin came in contact with mine, this tingling rush that raised all the fine hairs and sent a jolt of pleasure straight to my fucking dick, which I hoped like hell she didn’t notice in the dark.

If you think that was it, that she just cuddled into me a little bit and laid stiff in my arms, you’d be wrong.

She went all in, getting herself snug right up against me, her head half on my shoulder and half on my chest, and put one of her long, slender legs atop both of mine. It was a bit bulky and awkward, her being in my oversized tee and sweatpants – but that was certainly a boon in this situation. Enough of a deterrent to keep me in check. Not that I couldn’t do that – I could do it just fine. I had self-control. It’d just been a long time since I’d had to exercise it.

We settled and I laid my head back into the pillow and breathed out a sigh that I hoped she registered as contented rather than the mix of frustration and exasperation that it was. No, I wasn’t upset with her in the slightest. Just at myself for not realizing she swung the opposite way, so-to-speak.

I was up on the whole trauma responses and PTSD, but mine was for a very different reason than hers. Still, in group therapy at the VA, the therapist we’d worked with was firmly convinced that trauma was trauma no matter where its origin point; and as such, we’d had some tough group therapy sessions. Sessions where, not only were we in a ring of fellow soldiers with combat-related PTSD, but we also had the odd female soldier that sexual assault related trauma came up.

That’s where I learned that some women went one way, the way you’d all pretty much expect a woman to go after being violated like that – with not wanting to be touched by anyone at all, ever… but that wasn’t the only trauma response there was.Just as the pendulum swung to one extreme, so it usually had the option to swing to the other and some of the women had spoken of the great shame of having an equally strong but opposite reaction – where they just couldn’t get out there and findenoughsex.

Some of them were there to work throughhypersexuality issues and not all of them could even explain why that was the way they’d gone.

Whatever the case in Lorelai’s instance, I didn’t want to rock her boat any more than it’d been rocked. She was supposed to be getting it together, taking some time to come to grips and to heal, and I didn’t want to get in the way of that or throw any kind of wrench into the works.

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