Page 60 of Fear
After dishes were put away and Tobias was back on the couch with a book, Jake went for a run. He didn’t mind a little rain.
THE PACKAGE WAS WAITING when he came back from his run. He carried it to his bedroom to open with his knife, just in case. Roger’s description had been vague to the point of ominous, and he had decided that anything that made him nervous he shouldn’t do in front of Tobias.
But when he pulled off the plain brown wrapping, it was just as Roger had warned him: a book. A good-sized book with thin pages and medium-size print. Recovering the Survivors: A Practical Guide to Handling Post-Traumatic Stress and Trauma-Related Behaviors by Lakshmi Chandramohan. Skimming the table of contents, Jake unexpectedly felt a coil of anxiety in him relax. He didn’t know where Roger had found it, but holding proof that someone else had dealt with these problems, had put in enough work that she’d literally written a book on it, made him feel less alone for the first time since he’d taken Tobias away.
He considered covering the book the way he had been required to wrap his textbooks, but immediately rejected it as dumb. Tobias wasn’t going to pry, and if he did, so what? This was supposed to help him too. They didn’t need secrets.
The first time through took him a day and a half. He read nonstop for hours, focusing like it was research for a case with a string of bodies, barely aware of how Tobias kept peeking at him over his own book. He seemed concerned at Jake’s radical behavior change and watched him during meals like he thought Jake might shake him and stomp out again. When it finally clicked for Jake just how much Tobias’s anxiety was ramping up again—when through dinner, Tobias could barely force out more than a couple words through the stutter that had been hardly noticeable the day before—he made a special effort to smile, to squeeze his hand, and took a break to play cards again, dragging his mind out of the book and back to the here and now.
Tobias didn’t look completely reassured, but he ate better and seemed less nervous. Jake, gaining insight with every page, counted that as a win.
The second reading took three days, and he had to stop often, dropping the book in his bedroom and taking grueling runs around the block, once running all the way to the park just so he could go up and down the killer stairs Tobias had fallen down. He needed the adrenaline, the extra pump of his heart to give his brain space to work. He couldn’t stop reliving every hour of the last four weeks and seeing how they slotted into place. He had to know down to the last detail what he had done wrong and how to avoid repeating those mistakes.
Of course, not everything lined up perfectly. The book itself said that each case was different. A lot of Tobias’s behaviors were just a little different from the textbook cases, and other parts were completely missing.
Rage, for example. It was supposed to be a primary response, outbursts and irritation a normal outlet for the survivor’s past and current helplessness, but Tobias didn’t display that. Not even a flicker.
Other things were so word-for-word exact that it sent chills down Jake’s spine. Hell, the book even mentioned breakdowns in grocery stores. More than once he ended up swearing at himself, pacing his bedroom and raging—if Tobias didn’t have anger, Jake certainly did, and sometimes he wondered if he should be more concerned about that—at all the catastrophes they could’ve avoided if Jake had done a little research on this shit during those six months he’d kicked his heels waiting for the word he could snatch Tobias out of the ASC’s special torture factory.
But he hadn’t known this. He couldn’t have predicted it. Not even Roger had suggested it to him then, and Jake suspected he knew more than he was letting on. But there was no use looking back. What he had to do now was take what he learned, apply it, and hope like hell he hadn’t messed Tobias up too bad already.
No, he wasn’t going to think that way. From here on out, it was going to be positive thoughts all the time, because Jake had scraped the last of his pride away when he’d hit rock bottom. He was ready to take every bit of professional advice he could get. Tobias was going to get better, Jake was going to get his shit together, and they would be okay. One day at a time.
Two whole chapters dealt with physical contact and how both crucial and dangerous it was for trauma survivors. There were plenty of warnings about how it could set them off, trigger bad reactions, and send victims spiraling to the worst places in their head, especially when the contact was unexpected or undesired.
But conversely, there was a lot about the effects of touch deprivation, especially for kids. The book said that sometimes touch, the good kind, could be vital. “Good touch” had to be from someone the victim trusted and could only happen in a safe, consensual environment. No pushing and no strangers.
Jake had broken that rule often enough he could throw up thinking about it, but beating himself up didn’t help either of them. They were on a better track now, and he could tell Tobias was feeling better with rules to obey, even when they sometimes backfired.
He didn’t want to automatically consider himself someone Tobias trusted—not when the image of Tobias pulling away from him was seared into his brain. But he couldn’t forget all the other times Tobias’s perpetual tension and fear eased when Jake took his hand or pulled him close either. The time Tobias had said, “Don’t go,” and reached for him. Jake couldn’t forget those moments, because they were all that had kept him going last week.
Roger had told him too. He trusts you. You’re the only one. Maybe so, and if he was—well, too late to undo all the damage, but he had to at least try to make amends where he could.
When he sat down on the couch next to Tobias that night, he didn’t crowd him, but he didn’t put a foot and a half of space between them as he had the week before. Tobias looked up, eyes wide, and Jake could almost believe he was more startled than afraid.
“Hey, Toby, there’s something I should talk to you about.”
Tobias drew in a breath, almost inaudibly. “About the—rules?”
“No—well, yeah, sorta. About part of one.”
The intensity of Tobias’s gaze was unsettling, reminding him how seriously Tobias took his words, how careful Jake had to be. He had always thought himself a pretty smooth talker, but he was nowhere near smart enough for this, when Tobias’s life and well-being were at stake.
JAKE LOOKED TROUBLED. Not as closed-off and unhappy as he had recently, but more weighed down than before the package had arrived. Tobias assumed it was the book Jake had been reading the last few days. It wasn’t any of his business, of course, and he would never so much as spy on the cover without Jake’s permission, but it made him nervous. He tried very hard not to think of all the possible objects and instructions Hunter Harper could have sent Jake. But Jake had said Roger was a good old friend and an excellent hunter. Tobias had glimpsed him a couple of times in the camp, though never lingering, and only once in an interrogation room. Even then, Tobias had never seen him hurting a freak, even his worthless self.
Tobias still worried.
Jake took a breath, placing his fingertips carefully together. “Y’know the rule about not letting anyone hurt you—”
“Rule Three,” Tobias said.
“Right, and the one about telling me what you like—”
“Rule Four.”
“Yeah, exactly. Well, I’m going to add something.”
Tobias held his breath instinctively, waiting to take in every word Jake said, even as his mind (stupid, unreliable freak mind) raced ahead with different possibilities. Punishments don’t apply. I’m the exception to both rules, you keep your mouth shut no matter what. Haha, just ignore Rule Three, that was a joke to see if a stupid freak like you would believe it.
