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From out of the recesses of her mind, the answer came, and it was not an exotic one.
Sitting up straight, she put her palms together, sharp and loud, twice.
Clap.
Clap.
All at once, Nate came awake, that blank stare filling with confusion, his brows dropping as he looked down at his arms as if he couldn’t figure out why they were locked on his bent legs—
With slow recognition, he released the grip on himself, his fighter’s hard body both uncoiling and tensing, all at the same time. Now, as he looked across at her, he seemed to know exactly who she was, but he was wary—like he wasn’t sure what she’d seen. How much had been revealed. How… bad it had been.
“It’s okay,” she said in a steady, calm voice. Which was not even remotely how she was feeling. “You’re all right.”
Inside, she was an absolute mess, but she knew what he’d be concerned about: This was what he hid from everybody, and he was worried she’d judge him in some way. Which was not going to happen.
And she did not blame him for keeping this all to himself. Troubles were shared. Tragedies were different. The former was a conversation, the latter was a stripping raw of someone who had been raw too much and too often.
Silence could be the only armor you had, sometimes. Because if you got talking? Your voice unlocked the dungeon, and the demons in your mind jumped you and you were never quite sure you’d be able to get free of them—
With an exhale, he looked away, staring across at the stretch of countertop where the sink was. “I…”
As he let things just hang there, she had a feeling he was trying to construct some kind of only-a-nightmare lie.
Nalla shook her head. “I’m not going to say anything to anybody. And I understand why you don’t talk about it.”
After a moment, he extended his legs out in front of himself and crossed his arms again, now over his lap. “It’s been a long time.”
“Since you’ve had a dream like that?”
Nate shrugged and didn’t look at her. “One that vivid, at any rate.”
There were so many questions to ask, but she was not going to pressure him—
“It’s just a nightmare,” he said. “Everybody gets them, you know. You probably have them, too, right?”
Yes, she thought. But not because she was reliving being an animal in a lab.
“I do.” She cleared her throat. “From time to time.”
“What are yours about?”
Struggling to focus, she tried to get her brain to plug into her own life. “Wasps. I dream of—wasps.”
“Oh, good one.” His voice became a little lighter, like he was tryingto embrace normalcy, fuse it to his own experience. “Do you come up on a nest or something?”
“I, ah…” What the hell was she saying? “No, it’s not like that. I’m not in the woods or anything. The wasps are in my bed… under my pillow, actually. I roll over and flush them. I always wake up just as they start to sting me.”
“It happens when you’re stressed, right.”
“Yes. When I’m stressed.”
“I don’t like cramped places.” He shook his head. Then ran his palm over his skull, his biceps bunching up. “Claustrophobia does it to me every time. Common thing to worry about, like wasps in your bed, right?”
“Yes,” she said again, softly.
He nodded, but it was in an absent way, and he still wasn’t looking at her. When he finally got up in silence, then said something about taking a quick shower, she wasn’t surprised. She told herself it was fine, that he was still sorting through what was real and what wasn’t, and a rinse off would help that.
But as he shut the door firmly, she knew it was more than just the bathroom getting closed off.
