Pete’s body turned into dead weight, and I clawed at him with even more desperation as I began to shake my head from side to side. Whoever it was beside me needed to leave before I hurt them the way I’d unintentionally hurt my brother. Everyone who got close got hurt.
She whispered soothing words in my ear, her warm breath causing my brows to crease as I tried to warn her to escape without having to say the words. Didn’t she know I was grieving? Couldn’t she see there was no consoling me after what I’d just lost?
Her hand moved to my neck, her fingers placing feather light touches against my skin until her nail grazed my jaw. I gasped for breath again, my mouth wet from the tears I couldn’t hold onto, and I instantly felt guilty for wanting her to do it just one more time. I tried to pull Pete closer, reassure him that I was focused on him and nothing else, but when I moved my arms, he was gone.
She spoke again, her words unclear as my hands reached up to clutch my heart. I wanted to rip my chest open and squeeze it tight, to end my own life right there and then because this kind of pain was already threatening to choke me to death.
“Drew.”
“No,” I whispered back, shaking my head slowly. “No.”
I began white knuckling the bed sheets that had somehowworked their way beneath me. The woman’s touches kept on coming. It felt like her hands were everywhere until I was forced to open my eyes again, struggling to get enough oxygen into my lungs.
The cold hit my body first. Every part of my skin felt wet, and the tension in my limbs sent shockwaves through every muscle I possessed until her face came into view above me. Her legs scissored mine as she pressed her chest to me as gently as she possibly could.
“Come back to me, Drew,” she said quietly, her lips barely moving as one hand lifted to trace the worry lines away from my forehead.
“Ayda,” I croaked out desperately.
She never broke eye contact with me. Her baby blues were glassy and her breathing was heavy, but her touches kept coming, gentle and reassuring. “There you are.”
It took time for me to realize what had happened, but the moment I did, I dropped my head hard against the pillow beneath me. “Fuck,” I gasped.
Ayda laid still, only her fingers dusting over my skin. She seemed to understand that I just needed time to catch my breath before she spoke to me, but the gentle stroking of her fingers and the breeze of her exhale over my skin were all designed to remind me she was there when I needed her.
This was what she did.
My eyes closed and my hands unclenched from their death grips. I needed to touch her, but I couldn’t do much in that moment other than find my center again. Rolling my head lazily to the side, I looked up into her eyes.
“I’m sor—”
The words got caught in my throat as soon as I heardthe clawing and scratching sound that came from outside my bedroom window. Whether exhausted or not, my body shot upright, my arms circling around Ayda as I pulled her to me, as though she were another Pete that someone was about to rip from my grip.
Both of Ayda’s hands brushed through my hair before her eyes flickered to the window and back with a stuttered breath, “I-it’s just Tank, the yard dog. We’re safe here.”
I moved my mouth to argue with her, but nothing came out at all when the sound soon disappeared, and I realized she was right. My paranoia was at an all-time high, and with her tiny frame in my arms, I should have felt like the strong one—only I didn’t. I felt like a fucking baby. Closing my eyes one last time, I dropped my forehead to hers and blew out all the air in my lungs, refusing to look at her when I finally found my voice again.
“I’m sorry.”
“You have nothing to be sorry about, Drew. Nothing at all. I just…” She stopped as I opened my eyes and she blinked up at me, a small reassuring smile there before she rocked forward and kissed me lightly on the lips.
“You just wish I wasn’t so fucked up and complicated.” I paused, my chest expanding more than it should have been. “I wish for that, too. Things… They will get better.”
“No!” Ayda pushed up on her arms. “I wouldn’t ever change you, Drew. I love the man you are, faults and all. I just wish you knew you could talk to me about… about Pete and everything that happened. I know it was one of the worst days of your life, but if you keep it all balled up inside like this…”
She paused, unsure how to go on, but her eyes held mine.
“There’s nothing to say that will ever bring him back,Ayda. I fucking hate that you’ve just seen me that way.”
“Drew, the more you push it away, the longer your subconscious manifests it as dreams or nightmares. I’m not psychoanalyzing you. It's just what our bodies do. It’s how we’re wired. The less you deal with it, talk about it, the more it plays on your mind.”
She pulled one of her elbows from my chest and replaced it with her hand, the other turning to hold the side of my neck.
There were so many things I could have done to make the conversation move in a different direction. I had so many ways to silence her without having to say a word, but the way she was looking at me held me in some kind of trance.
“I miss him,” was all I could manage.
“Tell me about how it was before he died. The good memories.”
