Nash’s gaze clouded over again, balance wavering. “What if they kill her?”
I caught him before he fell, holding him against me like I had outside earlier, but without the dizzying heat. Cos I knew it wasn’t me making him tremble now; it wasfear, and my heart fuckin’ broke for him.
“Easy.” I tucked his head into the crook of my neck. “No one’s gonna hurt her, I promise.”
I should’ve told him I’d be dead on the ground before I let it happen, but if he didn’t know that already, I was doing it fuckin’ wrong.
I wrestled the tobacco pouch from his hand and dropped it on the floor. There was water everywhere. Once I’d got him into bed, I’d need a fuckton of towels, but at least I’d caught him before he’d flooded the place proper.
He gets rowdy when he’s upset.
Was Rubi’s definition of rowdy sleepwalking and vandalism? I wished he’d stuck around to clue me in a little more, but part of me was glad he hadn’t. Cos I knew what this was without any fucker having to explain it to me. Without having to be told it wasn’t the same as my ADHD kid busting out of her room at three in the morning and raiding the fridge for chocolate buttons. This was trauma; a live-action nightmare of every thought and feeling Nash kept to himself for the sake of other people, and fuck me, he didn’t deserve it.
I was still hugging him in the dark. I wove my fingers into his hair, rubbing tension from his neck muscles, debating what the actual fuck to do next. I had no real experience with adult sleepwalking, and every instinct I had told me not to wake him now he was kinda settled, but however willing I was to hold him up, he couldn’t stay here all night.
Take him to bed.
Damn, real life was a fuckin’ tease.
I got my arm around Nash’s waist again and guided him forward. His eyes were still open, but they were blank now, the anguish from before all but gone, and as we reached his bedroom, he seemed to catch on to where we were going.
At his bed, I sat him down, messing with the sheets and covers so he wouldn’t wake Orla trying to get comfortable. “Lie down, man.”
Nash lay down.
Then immediately sat up again. “Locke.”
“I’m right here.”
“Stay with her.”
“Always. Come on. You’ll feel better in bed.”
Lies. If he’d felt okay in bed, he wouldn’t have got up, consciously or otherwise. I wouldn’t either if Orla was naked in my bed.
Except to go find him and drag him back.
Christ, this was shaping up to be a fun night out. “Nash.” I tried again, firmer this time. “Go back to sleep.” Or, you know, back to the kind of sleep that didn’t have him turning the bathroom into Waterworld.
Nash lay down again. Turned over, restless, reaching for Orla before he seemed to change his mind, and shoved his hands under a pillow, still for all of three seconds before he moved again.
I couldn’t fathom how Orla didn’t wake up. Perhaps she was used to it, a thought that turned my stomach. I rubbed Nash’s back. It settled him, physically, but man, he would not shut up.
“Need you both safe.”
“We are safe.”
“Need to feel it.”
“You need tosleep.” Maybe that’s what this was, exhaustion. Once he was calm, I needed to google the hell out of this shit.
Nash quieted. It was my cue to slip away, but my knees remained rooted to the floor, and I stayed, rubbing his back and breathing in the smoky, masculine scent of his room, with the sweet scent ofwomanlayered over the top.
My gaze skimmed Orla, her milky tattooed skin, her killer legs. It was the world’s cruellest trick that apart and together, both souls in this bed were my ultimate fantasy.
It doesn’t have to be a trick. They want you.
Somewhere in the depths of my mind, I knew that, but while Nash was hurting, none of that fuckin’ mattered.
