Page 33 of Say You'll Stay

“Try me.”

“You don’t wanna hear about that.” She sighs when he only raises a silent brow, waiting for her to continue. “Him. I see him. In that bathroom coming at us, or before, when she wasn’t even here yet, the virus hadn’t happened, and he was coming at me anyway.”

She’s right. He doesn’t want to think about that. The mental image of her being attacked by her dead husband isn’t a thought he wants in his head. There’s nothing he can do about it now except let it enrage him, but she needs to talk and he’s a decent listener. That doesn’t mean he’s got any useful suggestions for her, though. He’s failed to get rid of his own nightmares after all these years.

“Maybe it’ll just take time, like you said before,” she continues. “He’s dead. I know he’s not coming back. I have plenty of other things now to replace him with in these nightmares.”

“He’s not coming back, but sometimes that logical shit doesn’t matter. I still have dreams, too.”

“About what? Or who?”

It was forever ago. Doesn’t matter now and he’ll only seem like a loser who can’t let go of the past, but she’s watching him with such open honesty, so hopeful that he may offer her validation that he can’t ignore it. So, he tells her what he’s never told anyone. Not even Wade, though he suspects he knows anyway since he suffered a similar fate.

“One of my foster parents. He wasn’t winning any father of year awards back in the day.” Is all he says, but her facegoes soft like she wants to reach out across this bed and touch him, though her hand never moves. “Got moved a lot. Most of them didn’t care enough to bother me. Some were in it for the checks, a few were kind and decent. A lot were indifferent. He was indifferent too until one day he wasn’t.”

He’s barely said more than a full sentence and it still feels like too much. The itch to escape pushes him off the bed and to the window, where peeking through the blinds feels safer. Memories of that man bring back the sting of water in his lungs. Finding the cat at the pond the other day was only another nudge. Cole’s surprised he wasn’t caught in his own nightmare tonight.

“I’m sorry you had to live through that,” she says softly.

“Sorry you did, too.” He chews on his bottom lip a moment, fighting an internal battle to keep every awful detail a coveted secret. “The thing I have about water…it’s because of him.”

“Oh.” There’s no pity in her tone, only the desire to understand. He expects she might pry deeper and his grip on the windowsill clenches hard enough that his knuckles whiten.

He is thankful when she grants him the gift of keeping the majority of this secret, at least for now.

“So they never really go away? The nightmares?”

He shrugs. “They’ve faded. I don’t wake up yelling as much anymore but they never disappeared. I hope they will for you, though. Could be I’m just extra fucked in the head.”

No sense in sugarcoating it. Some things creep into your soul and make a home there. He’s no expert at making peace with what’s happened to him. He’s only tried to forget.

“Well, if I do it again, you can shake me. I’ll wake up,” she says.

“Shake you?”

“Yeah.”

“Not gonna do that, and fair warning if you shake me when I’m having one, I’ll come up swinging without knowing what the fuck I’m doing. So don’t do that, okay? I don’t wanna hurt you.”

“Okay.”

“Maybe I’ll nudge you next time. A little bit.”

“That works.” Her lips curve into a gentle smile, fingers playing with Lucy’s tiny fabric-covered hands.

For the first time, someone’s caught a glimpse of the part of himself he hides with every ounce of effort he can manage, and she hasn’t turned away in disgust. That’s throwing him off by a mile.

Then, the crash of broken glass shifts both of their attention.

Urging Olivia and the baby into a closet, he hears other doors down the hall creak open and the rustling of rooms being ransacked reverberating off the walls.

She wants to help, but Lucy needs her mother more. Hiding is the only option.

Cole flattens against the wall beside the door, waiting as the hinges rattle before it pops open with brute force. The moment he sees the back of another man’s head, he shoves the gun against it and catches an elbow to the face a second later, scrambling and wrestling with a stranger.

He learned street fighting from Wade and the kids at school long before the army taught him anything. There is a bulk to him that makes overpowering someone easier, and he uses his weight, the heft in his biceps and chest, to hold his own. At least, until his attacker pushes in close, reaches around, and slashes a knife across his back, ripping open an old scar thathealed years ago.

A kick lands him flat on the floor, shock dragging up long-buried memories, while thick hands wring his neck and squeeze hard. He digs his thumbs into soft eyeballs and cracks a fist across a strong jaw, earning a left hook to the chin that mirrors the one he threw.

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