I spoke louder this time, and knelt beside her, leaning close enough that I could smell her floral shampoo. “Sweetheart, you’re dreaming. Wake up. No one is going to hurt your hands. You’re safe. It’s not real.”
The next second she attacked me, hitting me hard and knocking me on my back. She rolled with me across the tent floor against the wall. “Not real,” she hissed, fingers applying all the wrong kinds of pressure. I couldn’t breathe. I could barely move. “Nothing is ever real.” She pressed harder against my throat. She was going to crush my windpipe if I didn’t start protecting myself.
I struggled to get her off me, but she was braced perfectly, leg hooked around mine to keep me down, using my weight against me.
I couldn’t speak, could barely hiss at her, and she responded with a snarl that showed the feral, terrified animal that had been beaten too many times.
I grabbed her hands and pulled her fingers, but she was so strong. I didn’t want to hurt her hands. I wouldn’t hurt her hands. What could I do that wouldn’t hurt her before I passed out or she did serious damage?
I pulled her head down fast enough that she didn’t have the chance to resist and kissed her. I’d had a lot of memorable kisses, but this was in a world of its own. She recoiled as if I were poison, or a zombie, or any number of other revolting substances, leaving me able to breathe, with a throat that would be bruised and sore for a few days, but alive.
“Daniela?” I said with my raspy voice.
She sobbed. She was curled up on the other side of the tent from me, and it wasn’t a very large tent, but it felt like rejection.
I rubbed my throat and cleared it a few times. “You have strong fingers. Are you okay, Pinkie? You were having some pretty wild dreams in here.”
“Dirk?” Her voice was so quiet, shaky, terrified.
“That’s right, Pinkie. It is I, your Jerk Badger of the?—”
She hit me, cutting off my words, knocking me onto my back, but this time, she wasn’t trying to choke me out. Instead, her arms were around me, fingers tangling in my hair almost painfully, but nothing compared to before.
I exhaled in relief and held her back. She cried, her body shaking while she clung to me, shaking apart while I tried to keep her together. “It’s okay, Daniela. I’ve got you.”
She pulled away suddenly and knelt on either side of me while she gripped the lapels of my flannel pajamas. “Are youcrazy? I could have killed you!” She shook me once and then collapsed back on my chest, leaving me to gather her back into my arms where she belonged.
“It’s not comfortable, but I doubt it will kill me. My back, maybe. Shall we roll onto the sleeping bag? The foam pad inserts inside the bag are brilliant, if I don’t say so myself. I designed them. You married such a clever tech geek. Here we go. One, two, three.” I rolled us until we were on the bag, her on top of me because I wasn’t about to crush her. I pulled down the zip and wriggled us inside. It was cold at night in the desert, particularly in November.
“What are you doing?” she whispered, voice still wavery.
“Getting comfortable. You are going to have a good long cry, and I’m going to hold you. It isn’t more therapeutic to cry on top of me while we’re out of the bag, is it? Because we can reverse things and be right where we were in two seconds.”
“You’re such an idiot.” She took a shaky breath. “I could have killed you. I thought you were Philippe.”
My blood went cold at the name, and I held her even closer. “Someone you don’t like.”
She shuddered and pressed her face against my neck until I worried that she couldn’t breathe, but when I tried to pull away, she held me even tighter. I relaxed and let her hold me tight. I was going to wait until she settled down and go to my own tent, but instead, I let her hold me, let it feel real, true, that she was mine and I was hers, and that I was going to keep the monsters at bay forever, and that she was going to trust me and love me as much as I loved her.
It had started the first time I stepped into that elevator and saw her, so brave facing her fear all on her own. She was strong the way my sister hadn’t been strong. I didn’t want her to be strong on her own anymore. Never again, not when being withher made life worth living. She wasn’t my revenge anymore; she was my future. That was more real than anything else.
I woke up with her in my arms, exactly where she belonged for the rest of my life. There would never be enough Christmases. Somehow I had to convince her that I loved her, without the destroying her at the end part of what she thought was a love story.
I kissed her forehead and watched her wake up in the shadowed light of early morning that spread through the thin tent walls. Her thick, dark lashes fluttered, and then she opened her eyes and stared at me for a long time, just staring like she’d never seen a face before.
“Dirk, did you sleep with me?”
I squeezed my eyes closed and then blinked a few times. “I did. Good thing, because staring at you all night would be creepy.”
“It was dark. You couldn’t have seen me in the dark.”
“I could have listened to you breathe.”
She frowned and raised her head off my shoulder to trace over my throat, talented fingers so light, I barely felt them. “I could have killed you.” Her voice was even, level, as though she’d never shed a tear in her life.
“You’re very talented with your hands.”
She frowned at me, fingers exploring my throat, tracing the skin with such a delicious feather-light touch, I got shivers, or maybe it was because she’d opened the sleeping bag and predawn’s chill was creeping in.
