Chapter 258: Jake
I’m the first one to feel it—a tremor that runs through the mattress like someone dropped a coin on the sheet. Reid looks up from his book at the same time I do, and without saying anything we each lay a hand in her hair, slow strokes, the kind you use to tell a skittish animal you’re not here to take anything, just to stay. It works for a breath. Then another ripple hits. Then a shudder.
“Hey, trouble,” Reid murmurs, keeping his voice low and warm. “You’re home.”
Her breathing skips, speeds. Words tangle in her throat—wet, broken little syllables that don’t belong to any language she uses when she’s awake. I set my book down, slide closer, try her name. “Madeline. Sweetheart, come back to us.” Her lashes flutter but the dream has both hands on her and it yanks; her whole body jolts and her injured wrist clips the headboard with a dull, sick sound.
“Shit—” I catch her forearm before she can hit it again, pin it to the mattress gently but firm enough to stop the damage, my own heart climbing into my mouth. “You’re okay, baby, you’re okay. It’s us.”
She isn’t here. She’s somewhere brick-dark and cruel, and wherever it is, it’s got her. Tears flood her temples, hot tracks shining in the low light; she shakes so hard the mattress hums under us and a raw little “please—please—please” scrapes past her teeth. I try to ease her shoulder down, to anchor her with my weight and voice. “You’re safe. You’re in our bed. Breathe for me. In… slow. Out… slower.”
Her body bucks. There’s a sharp, bright line of red sudden at one of her stitches, a bead that fattens and slips. Reid swears under his breath, already moving, bracing her with his thighs as he folds her up against him, chest to chest like he can shield her from something inside her own head.
“Cold cloth,” he snaps, eyes never leaving her face.
I’m off the bed and down the hall before the words finish leaving his mouth. Tap, water, twist. The cloth goes cold in my hands as fast as my blood goes hot; I wring it hard enough to make my knuckles sting and I’m running back, feet loud in the quiet house. She looks breakable curled against him, all sweat and fear and those sounds—God, those sounds—like someone taught a swallow to sob.
“Under her feet,” Reid says, voice rougher now, breath steadying for both of them.
I lift the blanket, slide the cloth flat beneath her arches. The shock of it makes her flinch, then stutter still, then tremble again, then ease. I press a second one to the inside of her wrist where I’ve been holding, cool against the heat of her skin. “That’s it. You’re here. You’re okay.” Reid’s hand moves through her hair, clearing damp strands from her forehead. “Come back to us, trouble. Follow my voice.”
Her shakes taper from earthquakes to aftershocks. The sobs thin into hiccups. She blinks once—twice—like her eyes are heavy as anchors, and then they open properly and catch the low lamplight. Wide. Wild. Lost. Her whole body is locked like a fist and her cheeks are blotched and slick; she looks at me, then at Reid, then past us, then back, as if the room might slide away if she stops checking.
“Hey,” I say, careful, both hands where she can see them. “We’re real. You’re awake. You’re safe.”
For half a heartbeat she doesn’t believe me. Then her lower lip quivers the way it did the first time she told me she loved me, only this time it’s grief she’s holding like water in her mouth, and it overflows. She breaks—soundless at first, just the shape of it—and then the sob lands hard and full in my chest because I know exactly what she’s crying for. For the terror. For the fact that he tries to live where we sleep. For the way a nightmare can turn a body you love into a place you can’t reach.
“I’m here,” Reid says into her hair, rocking her in the smallest sway, his chin against her crown. “I’ve got you.”
“I’ve got you too,” I add, sliding closer until my thigh is flush to hers, until we’ve made a wall around the shaking. I kiss her temple, taste salt and the faint sweetness of her shampoo clinging to the heat of her skin. “He can’t touch you here.”
She drags a breath in, jagged and huge, like it hurts to take something so simple from the air and keep it. I count it out for her anyway—quiet numbers against her pulse, the cadence we’ve used a dozen times now—until the panic stops clutching and starts loosening its grip like an old fist unclenching. Her fingers find mine in the blanket and squeeze, small, desperate. I go still so she can hold as hard as she needs.
It’s a long minute before the room comes back to itself—the lamp, the low ceiling, the sound of rain somewhere far out over the water—and we let her cry into the space we’ve made. We know every reason for those tears: all the fear her body keeps like a ledger; the fury of having him in her head; the exhaustion of being brave for the whole world while you drown in your own sleep.
“Good girl,” I whisper when her breathing finally evens. “That’s it. Stay with us.” Reid nods once, the kind of nod that means he is as close to breaking as I’ve ever seen him, and still he holds steady so she can fall apart on purpose, here, where we can put her back together as many times as it takes.