18. Eighteen

Dante went to bed early that night. It was the first time since we'd arrived at the cabin that he'd gone to sleep before one. I checked on him at midnight and found him face down and snoring, dead to the world. He looked so relaxed, it made me want to crawl into bed next to him.

But I wasn't ready for that. I wasn't ready for a lot of things.

Maybe we were moving too fast, but it wasn't like we had unlimited time. We had a little over two weeks left before he had to go back to his life. It didn't feel like enough. Not enough time for him to get better, or enough time for us to explore what this thing between us was.

It's a fling, Church. That's all it can be . I sighed and fell into my bed, staring at the ceiling. Since when I was I the sort that had flings ? I didn't even date people. I'd never wanted to. My life was too complicated to go getting involved with people. Asking someone else to put up with my PTSD felt unfair. Even if I did pursue a relationship, it couldn't go anywhere. What were we going to do? Get married? I couldn't see that working without one of us giving up our careers. I wouldn't know what to do without the Junkyard Dogs, and Dante…He loved music, which I could barely tolerate on my best days .

I closed my eyes. I'm thinking about this too hard. Maybe I should just enjoy it for what it is while I can. It's not like I'm getting any younger and there aren't exactly people lining up to get in bed with me.

On nights when my anxiety was running high, I usually tried to tough it out and stay awake, but I was so exhausted I couldn't stop myself from drifting off to sleep with a heavy heart.

I dreamed of the four by four cell that was my home for more than a year. I shared it with nine other men in complete darkness. The space was so cramped, we had to take turns sitting. Meals came once a day, and with them, beatings. Guards pulled people from the cells at random, but usually grabbed whoever was closest to the door. At first, I tried to be there most of the time, knowing that I was bigger than my cell mates, that I could take a beating better than them. But as the days wore on and my injuries festered, I offered myself up less and less until it was me cowering in the back of that cell, praying they'd choose someone else that day.

That was the time I dreamed of most often, of wishing to be small, to be a shadow in a crowded room, to be invisible so the pain would fall on someone else, at least for a little while, and the crushing guilt that followed.

I woke with that feeling weighing heavily on my chest and drenched in sweat. The ceiling fan spun above me like the blades on a helicopter, around and around and around. I thought about nothing, about everything, about sinking into the bed and never waking up, about the letters I should've written to the families of the men who had died in that cell if only I'd known their names. Instead, when I made it back to London, it was endless interviews and cameras crowding, voices shouting, applause roaring and "God Save the Queen" over and over while so many more were dying elsewhere.

I squeezed my eyes closed and forced myself to focus on my breathing. Name three things you can touch. The blanket in my hands. The pillow. Dante's soft lips… I sighed and let my eyes open, saying to the room, "I need to piss."

The room didn't answer, but my sleep-hoarse voice felt too loud against the steady whirr of the fan blades.

I got up and started my morning routine, downing two glasses of water before going out back. Nightmares always left me feeling angry for no reason, and the best way to get it out of my system was to workout. Weights were best, but I'd only been able to bring my travel equipment, which meant my adjustable dumbbells and resistance bands.

I started with a pair of twenties, doing curls, squats, and presses while watching the sun come up. Birds sang and crickets chirped. If I listened carefully, I could hear the frogs out at the lake, too. I still hadn't made it out there to go fishing, and it was likely I wouldn't. Dante didn't strike me as the fishing type, and there was no way I could leave him alone after what'd happened.

The door slid open behind me and I paused my workout to turn around. Dante leaned against the doorway, his hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, eyes still puffy. He'd thrown on a pair of sweatpants and a thin cardigan, but opted for his guitar instead of shoes.

I turned back to the workout. "You're up early."

"I figured since I confessed last night about watching you from upstairs, there was no point in all the secrecy." He paced out onto the patio and draped himself in the wicker chair, putting his feet up on the matching table. "Might as well come down and get a better view."

His fingers danced over the strings and my shoulders stiffened.

I looked over at him with a frown. "I'm not here to put on a show for you. "

"That's just a pleasant side effect," Dante said with a wink. "Forget I'm here."

That was impossible to do with him picking at the strings, but I tried. Adding an extra five pounds helped. It almost worked until he started to sing a slowed down, gender swapped version of "Take Me to Church".

I lowered the weights and rolled my head to the side to glare at him. "Ha. Ha. Very creative. I've never heard that one before."

"Aw, come on. What's your problem with music, anyway?"

I sighed and put the weights down on the deck. Sunlight danced through the trees and a warm wind kissed my face. There were no walls out there, no bloody concrete floors. That place was millions of kilometers away in a world Dante could never understand. But he deserved to know.

I sank onto the steps leading down from the deck, staring out at the peaceful forest. "The prison I was held in…It was deathly quiet sixteen hours a day. Everyone was afraid to whisper because if you did, the guards would pull you out and beat you for it. But four hours a day, there was music. Not the good kind either. They'd play it so loud, it felt like an earthquake. It felt like it was rattling my bones, like I was going deaf. It was so awful that when the music ended and they took us out to torture us, it almost felt like a relief. At least we always knew that was coming. The music, though, it was random when they played it. Sometimes before, sometimes after, sometimes they'd start and stop it. Sometimes…" I choked on whatever I'd been about to say and hung my head.

Dante touched my shoulder, and I flinched. I hadn't even heard him get up from his chair.

He slid down to sit beside me. "I'm sorry," he said so sincerely it hurt.

I shook my head and stared at my hands. "It's not your fault. You didn't do it."

"No, I mean, I'm sorry that happened to you. I wish it hadn't. They took something beautiful and twisted it and that's…It's so wrong. Just hearing about it makes my heart hurt."

I swallowed and said the same thing I always said when people said they were sorry for what I'd gone through. "Thank you." The words came out numb, meaningless.

He could never know how bad it was, even if I tried to explain it to him. That wasn't his fault, and it wasn't right that he should have to suffer because of my inability to function.

"Maybe I'm overstepping here," Dante said quietly, "but if music is a trigger for your PTSD, why would your boss give you this job? Is he that big of an asshole?"

"Who? Boone?" I snorted. "He can be an ass when it suits him, but not like that. He doesn't know. It's not usually an issue."

"But you knew it might be when he gave you this job. I mean, you knew I was a musician, didn't you?"

I didn't have an answer for him. Or rather, he wouldn't like the answer I did have. "I thought I could handle it," I mumbled. "It's been years. I've been in therapy. I thought…I thought I was better than this. Apparently, I was wrong. Maybe I'll never get better."

"I know that feeling." He let his head fall against my shoulder and we sat in silence for a long time, listening to the forest sing until he turned his head to look up at me. "Do the birds bother you?"

I shook my head. "No. Crickets, birds, nature sounds are all fine. And sometimes soft music is okay, but it never stays soft. It always gets louder or has percussion and I can't…I can't do that."

Dante pressed his lips into a thin line and studied me intensely before jumping up. "I have an idea. "

"Dante…" I tried to pull him back down. "I've already tried everything. If my therapist couldn't help me…"

"Please let me try? I promise we'll stop if it gets to be too much."

I relented with a sigh and let go of his hand, but only because I knew he wouldn't let it go until I proved him wrong.

Dante grinned and bounced up and down before kissing the top of my head. "Stay here. I'll be right back."

He ran off, and I winced at the sound of him stomping through the house like a whole herd of elephants. This was going to be bad. The man didn't know the meaning of the word quiet. He came back a few minutes later with a pair of socks. I watched as he folded the socks around the guitar strings.

"I don't think that will help," I said as he picked up the guitar a second time.

"Give it a chance," he said and put his fingers back on the strings.

I braced myself for the same visceral reaction I always had whenever he started to play, but this time, when he strummed the strings, it was barely there. The sound was much different, softer and muffled in a new way.

He gave me a hopeful look after playing just one note. "Better?"

"Keep playing," I whispered, dumbfounded that something as simple as a pair of socks could make such a difference.

Dante smiled and shifted the guitar before playing a series of familiar notes, but I didn't recognize Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" until he started singing.

My throat tightened. Music. I was listening to music, and it didn't feel like nails clawing at the inside of my head. When I closed my eyes, I didn't feel like the walls were closing in. For the first time since I'd been back, I felt the shadow of something like joy .

Dante played the whole song perfectly, singing in a much softer tone than I'd ever heard him sing before.

When he stopped, I let out a rough breath. "Where did you learn that?"

"My mom worked third shift at a hotel when I was in high school, which meant she slept in the afternoons three days a week. Right through prime practice hours. I had to figure out a way to play so I didn't wake her up." He smiled to himself. "Didn't help as much when I tried to teach myself the harmonica part to that one."

I laughed, trying to imagine him playing a harmonica shoved into a sweaty gym sock.

"So did that help?"

I nodded. "I think it did."

"Well, good. Now that I know, I'll play that way whenever you're around so you don't have to be miserable. But there's a price." He patted the guitar and set it aside. "You're making pancakes for my breakfast."

"Sure, if you wash the dishes," I replied with a shrug. I didn't think he'd go for it since Dante hadn't washed a single dish since we'd arrived. While Nina could do it, I didn't want the poor woman working any harder than she had to.

He smirked. "Cook my pancakes in nothing but an apron and you're on."