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Salvatore’s always carried his tension and rage in his jaw. The rest of his face could be bone-chillingly vacant and composed, but the set of his jaw and intensity in his blue-green eyes always give him away.
Things haven’t been easy.
We’re on the same page in terms of our relationship, deeply in love and committed. It’s everything else that has us struggling: adjusting to daily life, dealing with the aftermath of what we’ve been through.
Still trying to be who we are at our core.
No surprise that we’re handling things differently. I’m searching for meaning, ways I can reframe the events in a healthy manner so I can move on. The book resting in my lap is titledAfter Trauma: Eight Steps to Brighter Days
Salvatore’s seeking to bury it down and pretend things are like they always were. He doesn’t talk about his time in captivity nor specifics regarding his father. He refers to him as ‘he’ and changes the subject when I probe. My trauma is no different—he shifts and zones out whenever I offer too many details about the Mill and the Handler.
In his view, it happened, it’s over, thus it’s time to move on. Regardless of the many residual effects haunting us.
He’s fine ignoring them. After years of being forced to do so as an abused child, I understand where it stems from. I just wish… I knew how to handle the situation we’ve found ourselves in.
Six self-help books later, I’m still lost and anxious.
I reach out and touch his forearm. “Except when, Jon? When was sleep a priority?”
He subtly denies my touch, slipping his hands into his pants pockets and angling toward the window. “I got plenty of sleep for weeks.”
In his cell.
That has to be what he means—with nothing but cement walls and chains binding him, he lived in darkness and squalor for weeks. Pain and humiliation. The abject terror everything he’d ever fought for was in vain.
I swallow against the sore lump in my throat. Thinking about what he went through chokes me up. The tears are usually soon behind. Both things he hates, which is probably why he’s so distant in moments like these. He already knows how I’ll react.
Is it strange I miss the days I used to be able to hide behind a mask just as Dad taught me from a young age?
Dad.
Though his body was never found, his car was, riddled with bullet holes and smeared with his blood. It’s believed the men after us disposed of his body in typical mafia fashion.
His funeral is next week.
Another devastating topic I don’t know how to deal with…
I shut my eyes and breathe out slowly. “You should come to bed with me.For sleep.”
“Phi… get as much rest as you need. Don’t feel bad on my account. I’m not tired.”
“You’re human. You’re exhausted.”
His jaw clenches again. “I don’t need to be told what I am. Not even by you. Get some rest.”
He turns away from the snow flurries shimmying in the window and strides for the door. It snicks shut a second later, dispensing more darkness in the room. If not for the light from the nearby table lamp, I’d be sitting in the pitch black.
I sigh, my gaze dipping to the delicate ring on my finger. My old habit of fidgeting with my rose pendant has transferred over into a compulsion to twist the ring around. I do it lost in thought until I get up and follow.
Salvatore sees me approaching and sighs. “I don’t know how to do what you want.”
My brows connect. “Do what?”
“What you do… what people do. Process these kinds of things. Instead, when I think about it, I become angry. Ifailed, Phi.”
“Lucius has been defeated. The Neptune Society has been taken out. So has my rapist. We lived. We made it through.”
The muscle in his jaw bounces. He’s gone from glaring out the bedroom window to glaring out the living room window. The snowy flurries offer a relaxing view, but he’s peering at them as though the white flakes enrage him to no end.
