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“This sofa is really comfortable,” she let him know.
It was, and it was the reason Rafe had bought it. He’d crashed on it many times when he’d come back from a hard mission and had been too tired to make it upstairs to his bedroom.
He went into the kitchen and microwaved two frozen portions of chili made at his favorite restaurant in San Antonio. He arranged some crackers, fruit, and cheese on a serving board and took out two beers. Unless Bree’s taste had changed over the years, she wasn’t a wine drinker.
After assembling everything on a tray, he went back into the living room. She was no longer sitting upright but was curled up and sacked out.
Rafe didn’t wake her. Instead, he put the food back in the fridge and covered her with a blanket he took off the back of the sofa. He got another blanket for him, heading for the recliner across from her. The moment he settled in, he felt the sleep coming, and Rafe didn’t fight it.
He fell asleep, listening to the gentle rise and fall of Bree’s breathing.
----- ??? -----
Chapter Twelve
Bree woke to the sounds. Frantic words squeezed together between labored breaths and someone thrashing around.
She sat up, the movement automatically waking up her phone she was still holding, and she saw it was nearly ten pm. Not late, but she’d been asleep for…well, she didn’t know. She nearly made some frantic sounds of her own when she didn’t immediately recognize her surroundings. It took her a moment to realize she was in Rafe's living room, on his sofa.
And the sounds were coming from Rafe.
He was in the recliner across from her, his whole body in motion. Frantic shakes of his head. His hands grabbing out into the now dark room. His feet moving in some attempt to run in whatever nightmare had him by the throat.
“Get to her now,” he gutted out. “Get to her now.” Then, he groaned, a hoarse sob tearing from his throat.
That got Bree on her feet, and she hurried to him. “Rafe,” she said, touching his shoulder.
Big mistake.
Big.
He bolted out of the chair, aiming his body and the strength of seemingly a dozen men all at her. He tackled her, sending both of them onto the sofa. Rafe pinned her there, his muscles iron hard and his hot breath hitting against her face.
“Rafe,” she tried again. “It’s me. It’s Bree. You’re not in that dream. You’re here with me in your house.”
He froze, his eyes finally opening, and even though his gaze immediately connected with hers, she thought it still took him a couple of seconds to rip himself out of whatever hell he’d been in and to realize where he was. And who was with him.
“God, Bree,” he said. He let go of her as if she’d scalded him and rolled off her. Off the sofa, too, and onto the floor. He landed on his back with a hard thud.
“Rafe, are you all right?” She got up, kneeling down next to him.
“Yes,” he managed. “Bad dream.”
“I gathered that much.”
He stayed quiet but made no attempt to get up. “What did I say?” he asked, and she didn’t think it was her imagination that he was dreading the answer.
“Get to her now,” Bree admitted.
Rafe squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and groaned. “Yeah,” and that’s all he said for a long time.
He lay there with her leaning over him. Staring up at her. And there was enough illumination from the moon filtering through the windows for her to clearly see his expression. He was out of the throes of the nightmare now, but he was deciding what or what not to tell her. She gave him an out.
“You don’t have to say anything,” she assured him. That’s why it surprised her when he did.
“The woman in the picture,” he muttered. “Her name was Lieutenant Ellie Abrahamson. She was my protégée. I was her supervisor. She was twenty-three. And I failed to save her.”
Oh, mercy. That instantly watered her eyes, and she felt as if a meaty fist had just clamped around her head. She could hear every bit of the pain that he carried with him every moment of every day. Even sleep didn’t give him a reprieve because it came at him in nightmares.
