Chapter 23 Stronger Together
Another scream. Muffled but unmistakable.
Coming from Aiden’s room.
Ariella threw off her blankets and ran to the connecting door. Didn’t think about it, didn’t hesitate. Just opened it and stepped through.
Aiden was in his bed, tangled in sheets, thrashing. Lost in a nightmare that had its claws in deep.
“Mom, please don’t go…I’m sorry…please….”
Ariella approached carefully. “Aiden. Hey. Wake up.”
He didn’t wake up. Just kept fighting invisible demons, voice breaking on pleas that no one could answer.
“Aiden.” She sat on the edge of his bed, touched his shoulder gently. “Wake up. It’s just a dream.”
His eyes flew open. For a second, he didn’t see her, just stared through her, lost in whatever horror his brain had created. Then he focused.
“Ariella?”
“Yeah. You were having a nightmare.”
He sat up abruptly, pressing his hands to his face. “Fuck. Did I wake you? I’m sorry. I should have warned you…I have nightmares. All the time. My therapist says it’s PTSD but medication doesn’t help and…”
“Aiden. Breathe.”
He tried. Failed. His breathing was too fast, too shallow. The beginning of a panic attack.
“Look at me,” Ariella said firmly. “Right now. Look at me.”
He did.
“Count backwards from ten. Out loud. Can you do that?”
“Ten.” His voice shook. “Nine. Eight.”
“Keep going.”
“Seven. Six. Five.”
“You’re doing great. Keep going.”
“Four. Three. Two. One.”
“Again.”
They counted together. Backwards from ten, over and over, until his breathing slowed. Until the panic receded enough for him to think.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“Stop apologizing for having feelings.”
“I woke you up. On your first night here. That’s…”
“Human. That’s human, Aiden.”
He looked at her like she’d said something impossible again.
“How do you do that?” he asked.
“Do what?”
“Make it feel okay to not be okay.”
“Because I’m not okay either. So I get it.”
They sat there in his bed, her on the edge, him leaning against the headboard both of them exhausted and broken in different ways.
“The nightmare,” Aiden said finally. “It’s always the same. I’m twelve again. It’s storming. I call my mom and beg her to come home. And she does. But this time I’m standing on the road when it happens. I watch the drunk driver hit her car. I watch it spin out. And I can’t do anything. I just stand there and watch her die.”
“That’s not how it happened, though. You weren’t there.”
“No. But I caused it. If I hadn’t called, if I hadn’t been weak…”
“If a drunk driver hadn’t gotten behind the wheel, your mom would still be alive. That’s the only ‘if’ that matters.”
“You don’t believe that about your brother.”
“No,” Ariella admitted. “But I should. And you should too.”
“Should and can are different things.”
“Yeah. They are.”
Aiden pulled his knees up, wrapping his arms around them. Making himself smaller. “You can go back to bed. I’m okay now.”
“Are you?”
“No. But I will be. I always am, eventually.”
“What if I stayed?” The words came out before Ariella could stop them. “Just for a while. So you’re not alone with it.”
“You don’t have to…”
“I know. But maybe I want to.”
He looked at her for a long moment. Then nodded. “Okay.”
Ariella grabbed a pillow and settled in the chair by his window close enough to talk, far enough to maintain boundaries. The city glittered below them, thousands of lights representing thousands of people having their own private struggles.
“Tell me something true,” Aiden said quietly.
“What do you mean?”
“Something real. Not the practiced story. Not the performance. Just something true about you that nobody knows.”
Ariella thought about it. “Sometimes I don’t miss Ethan. Sometimes I go whole hours without thinking about him. And then I feel guilty, like I’m letting him die all over again by forgetting he existed.”
“That’s not forgetting. That’s surviving.”
“Tell that to my brain.”
“Your brain is an asshole. Mine too.”
She smiled. “Okay, your turn. Tell me something true.”
Aiden was quiet for a long time. “I don’t want to run my father’s company. I never wanted it. I want to design buildings that make people feel safe. I want to create spaces that heal instead of intimidate. I want…” His voice cracked. “I want a life that’s mine. Not his.”
“Maybe you can still have that.”
“How? After this contract, after the company transfers to me, I’ll be locked in. Expected to be Richard Frost 2.0. To sacrifice everything for the family legacy.”
“Or you could say no.”
“And watch everything my grandfather built collapse? Watch ten thousand people lose their jobs?”
“That’s not your responsibility.”
“It is if I’m the only one who can stop it.”
Ariella understood that burden more than she wanted to admit. “We’re the same, you know. Both of us drowning in other people’s expectations. Both of us sacrificing ourselves for the people we love.”
“Yeah. We are.”
“It’s exhausting.”
“So exhausting.”
They sat in comfortable silence after that. Aiden eventually lay back down, still curled up tight. Ariella stayed in the chair, watching the city lights blur and sharpen as her eyes drifted closed and open again.
Somewhere around four a.m., she woke up to find a blanket draped over her. Aiden was asleep in his bed, breathing steady and calm. No more nightmares. Just rest.
She should have gone back to her own room.
Instead, she pulled the blanket tighter and closed her eyes again.
For the first time since moving in, she felt like she might actually be able to sleep.