"It's okay, honey. I'm here. I'm here."
You are, but one day you won't be.
"You were having a nightmare, honey. It's okay..."
Those sweet, soft, murmured words hit me like haymakers. I feel Wendy's touch, I hear her sweet voice, but all I can see is her cold, gray, and dead.
My mind replays the images with sick clarity.
In my nightmares, she dies multiple ways, gradually becoming even more violent and horrible—a car accident, getting sick, burnt up from a fire, drowning in a pool, dead by someone else's hand, a brain aneurysm like Carrie.
Carrie.
My sister. My brother's wife. I loved that woman.
I loved how she loved my brother, my nieces, my boys, and my Wendy. She was always there to give mewoman advicewhen I was a dumb seventeen-year-old who didn’t want to go to my mom or dad with sex and relationship questions.
She gave Wendy such a long, warm hug after we found out she was pregnant with Liam, grounding her when everything felt terrifying. Molly had just turned one, so Carrie said she would help us with whatever we needed with the baby.
And she did, she and Silas driving over from where he was stationed at the time for Wendy's baby shower, and after Liam was born. She told Wendy she was doing fantastic as a new mother.
She helped me pick out Wendy's engagement ring with my mom, making sure it was the ring of my girl’s dreams.
She jokily called me the brother she never wanted, and shewas my sister in all the ways that mattered.
My brother loved—loves—Carrie so goddamn much.
Now, she's gone, and it’s not fucking fair.
If it could happen to them, it can happen to us. It will happen to us.
That's what causes me to yank my face from my wife's loving hands. I pull away, hating myself the entire time, and flip over away from Wendy.
I squeeze my eyes shut and grit my teeth, barely resisting the urge to scream.
"Atlas, are—" Wendy starts, sounding so goddamn sweet and concerned, the way she always sounds.
It just makes my irritation spike, at myself, not at her.
Never at her.
"I'm fine."
Please, baby, please let it go.
"Atlas, you sounded—"
Terrified? Yeah, I was just hugging your dead body.
"Wendy," I snap, keeping my voice hard while inwardly begging her to stop, inwardly begging me to stop. "Leave it."
Please, baby, please, please, please, just leave me alone, just let me be, please, please, please.
She doesn't, because my Wendy loves me too much and she could never let me sit in pain.
"Please, just talk to me—"
I ignite, and the words I snarl are not at her. They're at myself, at my fear, at my helplessness, but of course, Wendy is stuck in the path of my destruction.
