The bed shifted, and Calvin drew up close behind me. He snaked an arm between mine and wrapped it over my chest, holding me tight.
“Calvin,” I said with a sigh. I rolled over to face him. “You can’t keep being so sweet and touchy with me if I’m not allowed to have you.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I can’t help myself.”
“It’s not fair.”
Calvin removed his hand. “I know. I’m sorry.”
I couldn’t help but imagine that Calvin, with the way he touched—so gentle and as if it were the greatest experience of his life—had been denied intimate contact for a long, long time.
“I’m not asking you to wave a rainbow flag around,” I said. “You don’t have to announce to everyone you work with that you’re fucking a guy.”
“There’s more to it than that, Sebastian,” Calvin replied. “I’m… not a good choice for a partner. There’s a lot wrong with me that I don’t want to burden another person with.”
“Sounds like an excuse.”
Calvin laughed. “Believe me, baby, it’s not.” He reached out to touch my cheek. “I’m sorry.”
I pushed his hand away and moved closer, firmly holding him. “Every time you call me baby, I’m going to hug you.”
“What’ll that accomplish?” he asked while planting his fingers in my hair.
“You drop it constantly, so maybe if you get enough hugs, you’ll warm up to dating. I don’t know.”I just know I want you and can’t bear the thought of losing you.But I didn’t say that out loud.
Chapter Twelve
I HADfallen into a sleep that I don’t think even the dead can obtain. It had been great until I got punched in the face and knocked into the brick wall. I startled awake, the entire left side of my face hurting and the wall scratching uncomfortably on my back. I think I cursed, but it was drowned out by Calvin’s screams. It took me a second to realize he wasn’t being killed, though if I had been going by sound alone, that’s what I’d have suspected.
I sat up, reached over the bed, and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Calvin!”
He was thrashing in a nightmare—there was no other explanation for me having been slammed so hard. His skin was clammy and damp to the touch.
“Calvin! Wake up! Jesus—!Calvin!”
He woke up with a start, sitting up and struggling to breathe. He was shaking and quickly covered his face with his hands as he sobbed uncontrollably.
Oh God. What was happening?
I removed my hands from his shoulders, and they sank while he cried.
His side of the bed was damp with sweat as I moved to climb off.
These were night terrors. True, actual terrors that could wake a man—a man who I suspected was stronger and braver than anyone I had ever known—from a deep sleep and reduce him to an emotional mess in seconds.
It was then that those little things I’d seen Calvin do started to connect. The moments he’d been startled—Max dropping the box, when I said his name while he was half-asleep, the squawking African grey…. And the twelve years of military service that Calvin refused to talk about.
It made sense now.
PTSD.
“Cal? Honey, you’re okay,” I said loudly, trying to be heard over his crying. “You’re in bed, in your apartment in New York. You’re here with me. Everything is okay,” I insisted.
The moment was surreal, to see such a powerful man reduced to nothing but raw and bleeding heartache.
What had he been dreaming about? What haunted him? The war in the Middle East had gone on so long that many Americans just sort of forgot about it, myself included. Now that soldiers were home, just exactly how many of them were coming back with invisible wounds that the public still discriminated against out of sheer ignorance?
What can a man bear to see before he’s seen too much?
