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Okay, he’s starting to sound like himself again. I shoot him a glare. “I’m so relieved. I’ll sleep so much better tonight.”
Cos tugs on my hand. “Stop it. Both of you.”
Resisting the urge to say “he started it”—because, really?—I turn to go, her hand warm in mine.
I’m not the one who lost something today—two parents, one dead and the other one hopefully ending up in prison for life. I need to remember that. I’m going home with my girl, to my family, and if Ross doesn’t want us around, then he’s welcome to go to hell all by himself.
Maybe that will remind him of the hell he put us through as kids and learn something from it.
Meanwhile, I’ve dusted up all the dark corners of my mind. Fingers crossed the dreams will catch up to that and go away so I can sleep in peace with my girl from now on.
Epilogue
Cosima
Two months later
A sound wakes me up. It’s still mostly dark outside the window slats, the faint illumination from the street lamps picking out details in the room.
Merc’s room.
And he’s facing away from me, that broad back stiff and rippling with tension. He sl
eeps naked—these days, we both are—and I wish I could take the time to appreciate the view right now.
But his shoulders twitch. Curling into himself, he produces another of those sounds that woke me up: a broken moan.
Nightmare alert.
His dreams didn’t stop, though he says they aren’t as bad as they used to be. It was wishful thinking to believe they’d stop the moment he remembered what his mind was hiding.
Whereas mine did stop. I guess my subconscious realized he’s out of the deep water now, treading on safe ground.
I’ve learned how to help with the nightmares over the past couple of months. Turning around, I switch on the overhead lamp, blink for a moment, blinded, and wait.
The light sometimes helps, wakes him up or switches the dream channel.
That’s how I think of Merc’s sleep: a broadcasting station, randomly playing different channels, though it’s mostly set on a Hitchcock horror program.
But the light doesn’t do the trick this time.
“Merc.” I touch his shoulder, shake him a little. “Merc, wake up!”
He jerks, body going rigid, and I get up and walk around the bed so he can see me as he finds his way back from dreamland.
Or memory-land. Hard to name it when the two seem to be so intertwined in his mind.
His eyes are wide-open in the half-dark, dark with remembered fear. They slowly focus on me, click, click, zooming in, until he sees me.
“Cos…”
I put my arms around his naked body before he’s finished saying my name. “Here. I’m here.” He grunts, hauling me onto the bed with him so we’re tangled up together, arms around each other, one of my legs between his. “Was it a bad one?”
He snorts.
True, one of his bad ones would have woken both me and JC next door. But it’s a good question to ask, to help ground him.
He tucks me closer, my head under his chin, so I can listen to his heart beat like gunfire against his ribs. “It’s getting better,” he says, his voice hoarse.
