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Lia was beside me a moment later.
“Are you all right?” She reached to touch my arm, but I shoved her hand away.
“I’m fine,” I snapped.
“Who was out there?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“No one.” I rubbed my forehead with the back of my hand and laughed at myself. “We live on the fifteenth floor, for Christ’s sake—how would anyone get there?”
“I understand that,” Lia replied quietly. “Who did you think you saw?”
I looked over to her, crouched on the floor a couple feet away from me like she was trying to coax some wild, wounded animal out of a cave. To top it off, she was as naked as I was. I shook my head at the ridiculousness of it all and pushed against the carpet to stand myself up.
“Come on,” I said as I reached my hand out for Lia’s, “let’s go back to bed.”
She took my hand and followed me back into the bedroom and under the sheets. She was tentative to touch me at first, given how I had reacted in the other room, but I wrapped my arms around her waist and she wrapped hers around my head.
We both relaxed with a long sigh.
“Are you going to tell me what you saw?” she asked.
“Just a kid,” I replied with a shrug.
“You were going to shoot a kid?”
“I shot him before.” I tilted my head up to see her better. “He was wrapped in explosives and headed for our base. I took him out from two kilometers away six years ago, and he shows up on my fucking balcony now. What’s up with that shit?”
“I don’t know,” Lia replied. “Have you ever talked to your psychologist about him?”
“No. Didn’t see any point.”
“Maybe he can help you figure out what the point is,” she suggested.
I looked at her for a long moment as I tried to come up with a way I could even begin to convey everything that had happened over there. I couldn’t possibly talk to Mark about every little detail, and I didn’t know how to put it into words that would make any sense. Besides, I knew exactly what Mark Duncan would say—seeing this kid was somehow important.
The problem was that there were probably a thousand other important bits I wasn’t seeing.
“No,” I finally said. I felt Lia tense at my words.
“You can’t just ignore it,” she said. “Evan—you were about to shoot up the balcony door.”
“I didn’t.”
“But you would have!”
“Maybe not,” I said with a shrug. I tucked my head against her body, hoping she was going to get the hint and drop it all. I wasn’t used to having someone else around me so much, let alone have to justify myself and my actions. It was uncomfortable at the very least.
“You can’t keep going like this,” Lia said. Her hand ran over the back of my head slowly, and I relaxed a little. “It’s scaring me.”
I opened my eyes and looked back up at her. All the stress and worry were plain on her face, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to do to change that. I wasn’t sure that I could.
“I scare me sometimes,” I admitted. I cracked a bit of a smile, but it wasn’t returned. My tongue darted out over my lips. “I don’t know how to make it stop. I don’t even know when it’s going to happen. It didn’t happen for years, and it just started again.”
“When did it start up again?” Her fingers moved to my shoulder and over to my chest. With the palm of her hand, she stroked down to my abs and back up again.
The feel of her touch was distracting, calming, and disarming.
