Page 134 of Nanny and the Beast

His gentleness only makes me cry harder. I let him hold me until I'm all cried out.

"I'm sorry," I say.

"Don't be sorry," he replies.

I look at his face. I see that he's scared too. He has demons in his head that the world doesn't know about.

"Can I ask you something?" I say.

His eyes find mine. He nods.

I hesitate for a moment. This could go one of two ways. But there's only one way to find out.

"Why are you repulsed by physical touch?" I ask.

As I expected, he freezes at the question. He didn't expect that I would ask him this.

"When Rosalie hugged you in the garden, you turned green," I say. "But it doesn't have anything to do with Rosalie, does it?"

He closes his eyes. Seconds pass. He's quiet for so long that I think he fell asleep.

"Things happened in the war." He speaks these words into the night.

Some intuition tells me to remain quiet.

"I was in Afghanistan," he says. "I was a sergeant with ten soldiers in my squad. They were my brothers. We shared a life together. They trusted me. But when they needed me the most, I wasn't there for them. I failed them."

I want to hold him. I want to tell him that whatever happened, it couldn't have possibly been his fault.

But I remain quiet and give him the space to share his story on his own terms.

"When you're in enemy territory, everything can change in an instant," he says. "Your whole world can turn upside down in the fraction of a second.All you can hope for is that you're prepared for it when it happens."

Gingerly, I place my hand over his chest. I find his heart racing.

I have a feeling he's never shared this story with anyone before tonight.

"What happened?" I ask him.

"We were ambushed in the middle of the night," he says. "All of us were taken as captives. We were supposed to be used for ransom, but when things didn't go as planned, they began the torture."

It feels like a horror movie unfolding before me. I don't want to look, but at the same time, I can't look away.

"It lasted for weeks. Months," he says. "All of us were in that cramped cell, left with nothing but our thoughts. Most were killed, some took their own lives. All of us broke. And when one of us passed away, they didn't take the bodies out. We were forced to watch as the men we knew and loved..."

He trails off.

My heart aches for everything he went through.

"I was the only one who survived," he says. "I made it out, but I might as well have..."

"Don't say it," I whisper.

I search his face. He's here with me, but at the same time, he's somewhere else. His mind is lost in the past.

"Do you really believe that it's your fault?" I ask him.

"Itismy fault," he says. "I was responsible for their lives. I was supposed to protect them and prevent something like that from happening in the first place."

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