Page 3 of Pucking Unhinged
“I couldn’t find you,” he murmurs suddenly, like he’s still half in the dream. “I couldn’t—fuck, Winter, you were gone.” I don’t know what his night terrors consist of, because when he’s awake and capable of talking about them, he acts like they’re not a big deal.
“I’m here with you,” I whisper, and that’s all it takes.
But then Tristan stiffens. His jaw locks, and he shakes his head hard. “I hurt you so much. Leave. Get away from me.”
The words cut, even though I’ve heard them before. His default. To push me away. To suffer in silence. To convince himself he can handle it alone.
I don’t move. Instead, I press my hand against his bare chest, right over his racing heart. His skin is hot, slick with sweat, his muscles twitching under my touch. Slowly, deliberately, I slide my hand down, tracing the ridges of his abs until my palm rests low on his stomach.
His breath stutters. His head drops forward, dark hair falling into his face as if he can’t bear to look at me.
“Let me stay,” I whisper. “You need me to stay.”
He lets out a sound that’s half gasp, half groan. His whole body trembles under my touch. And then, in a broken whisper, he says, “Fuck.”
The anguish in his voice guts me, but he leans into my hand, like he can’t help himself. Like the contact is both too much and not enough.
He doesn’t realize how overtired he is, how weak his walls are when exhaustion drags him down like this. I think maybe,just freaking maybe, I can convince him to let me stay with him tonight.
I don’t have night terrors like Tristan does, but sleep doesn’t come easy for me either. I never feel rested. Never feel like I get a real night’s sleep. And when I’m with him? It’s not better. Because instead of closing my eyes, I want to stay awake. I want to watch him, rub his back, soothe him while he finally gets the peace he’s been denied for so long.
Because if anyone deserves peace, it’s my Tristan.
I move closer, my palm sliding up over his stomach and across his chest. My breath is warm against his jaw as my fingers slide over his shoulder and curl around the back of his neck.
I can tell that it takes everything in him not to pull away and tell me to leave. Instead, he closes his eyes and folds into me, his huge arms coming up and around me. His palm slides down my back, fingers finding the small of my waist and tugging me to him with a fierceness that feels like the sweetest pain.
He buries his face in my neck, inhaling me like he needs me to keep breathing.
“Just this once let me help you instead of the other way around,” I say, softly.
He dips his head against my skin again and breathes my name like a prayer. “You don’t have to do this,” he tells me, voice raw.
I pull away enough to meet his eyes, and the half-broken, half-pleading sound that leaves him hits my ribs like a fist.
He’s the strongest person I know. Watching him break is like being punched in the gut repeatedly, but genuinely nothing he has tried, from therapy to straight up violence, helped him break through the guilt of hurting me. So fuck everyone, including his father, who has made comments about how he drags me around like a rag doll or security blanket. Maybe I like it. Maybe it helpsme too. It’s really, and I say this with my whole chest, none of their fucking business.
I take Tristan’s hand, fingers interlacing with his, a silent promise that I’m not letting go. I tug him toward me, and he obliges, folding himself into the space beside me with a careful tenderness that feels so familiar. There’s never been anything else that I can compare to what I feel with Tristan. It’s like I’ve known him before I met him, like there’s been other lifetimes and he’s found me in every single one of them.
He looks like he’s about to pull me into his arms, to curl his body around mine the way he always wants to, but I stop him. I lie back, resting my upper back on the fluffy pillows, and pull him toward me.
He doesn’t argue. That’s how I know he really needs this.
He settles next to me and lays his head on my chest. I pull the comforter up over us and let my hands find his hair, threading my fingers through the dark strands. He breathes out, a sound that I’m absolutely sure is both relief and surrender.
His hands are restless for a moment, like there’s this nervous energy taking over him.
“I want you to touch me too. If you want to, I mean. It’s okay with me,” I tell him because I know he thinks that because those men forced him to take my virginity at gunpoint that I shouldn’t be able to stand his touch. But I crave it, I want it, I need him. One of Tristan’s hands clumsily slips under my night shirt, thumb brushing my hip before roaming up my ribcage. His fingers flex against my skin and then, slower, they trace down the length of my thigh until they find the pale, puckered scar that bars the memory I try not to think about.
He doesn’t touch it like it’s just any old scar. He pays reverence to the simple act that saved my life that night. Tristan strokes over it like he’s trying to soothe something he caused. The truth is, if he hadn’t cut me as a distraction, he andSebastian would have never been able to overpower the men. It was risky, but it saved my life, and I’m so grateful to be alive and have that scar even if he’d never believe that.
“It doesn’t hurt anymore, Tristan,” I whisper. His whole body tenses, thumb pressing over the raised line, and I can feel the tremor under his palm and the way his breathing is starting to become erratic again.
“Match my breathing, Tristan. I can’t settle unless your heart stops racing.” He’ll do it if he thinks it’s for me.
He’s quiet for a long moment, and then his chest finally slows. With each breath, I feel the rush of him letting go, inch by inch, until the tightness that lives in his shoulders starts to unspool.
I can tell he’s almost asleep because everything feels lighter now. It’s not the thrashing, animal-like sleep that steals Tristan most nights. His breaths are even, like a tide pulling out. I know, with a hollow, grateful kind of hope, that this might be the best sleep he’s had in a long time.
