My brain won’t let me do that, anymore. It won’t let me pretend that I’m safe. Or that Kenta and Glen are safe. Or that Briar’s safe. No one is safe. No one is going to be okay. Sooner or later, terrible things are going to happen to everyone I love. The veil has been pulled back, and now I’ll only ever see the world as one giant war zone.
The truth is, I am scared. All the fucking time. Every waking second. When I’m taking a piss, or eating cereal, or walking down the street, I’m terrified. Some part of me has never left the room where I watched my best friends get tortured. Some part of me is still watching it on repeat. And I’m sofuckingscared.That’swhy I didn’t tell Briar about X’s threats. It wasn’t the nightmares or the flashbacks; it was the deep, gnawing fear that lives inside me. I can’t get rid of it.
That’s the worst part of PTSD. The disconnect. I live in the same physical world as everyone else, but I don’t see it the same. I just see danger. And blood. And death.
“Fuck,” I gasp, rubbing my chest. My shirt is sticking to me with sweat. “Jesus. It never stops.”
Glen sits in front of me. “It’ll get better, man. When you see a therapist.”
I rub my eyes with the heels of my hands. I’m choked up. “It won’t ever go away.” I can’t unsee what I’ve seen. It happened. It was real.
“No,” he agrees. “But it will get better.” He reaches over and puts a hand on my shoulder, squeezing.
Almost two hours pass before I hear the buzz of a keycard in the front door. I’ve spent the entire time pacing up and down the suite like a caged animal. I wheel on Briar as she pushes inside the suite, Kenta stepping in quietly behind her. The man is beaming.
“What the Hell,” I bite out. Briar looks up at me. She looks much better than yesterday; sparkly-eyed and pink-cheeked. She’s dressed in a little yellow sundress, and her loose hair is falling in waves around her face. The rose necklace we all picked out for her glitters around her neck. I have to fight the urge to just grab at her. “Where the Hell have you been? We’ve been worried sick.”
“Why?” She kicks off her shoes. “Kenta texted, didn’t he?”
I scowl. “Because the last time you disappeared, you got kidnapped.”
“Well, this time, I just got hash browns.”
“What happened to you?” Glen asks Kenta. “You win the damn lottery?”
Kenta shrugs, still smiling. “Pretty much.”
I ignore them both, striding towards Briar. She steps right into my open arms, letting me pull her close and burrow my face into her hair. My breathing is embarrassingly ragged as she reaches up and squeezes the back of my neck.
“That bad?” She says quietly.
I grunt, winding my hands in her soft hair. “Don’tleaveme like that.”
She stiffens in surprise. I clear my throat. “I mean.Just. Please don’t leave thebuildingwithout me.”
Glen snorts. Briar studies me for a moment, then goes up on her tiptoes. “I might leave the building without you,” she whispers, her lips brushing my cheek. “But I have no current plans of leaving you.” She presses a kiss to my mouth. “I love you. Please make me coffee.”
I straighten. My chest is aching worse than the time I punctured my lung in training. I give the rose charm on her necklace a little tug. “Diva.”
“So I’ve been told.” She tosses me a smile, and I head to the breakfast bar to get the coffee started, trying to ignore my heart battering in my chest.
Glen comes up behind her, gently touching her cheek to check out her stitches. “How are you feeling, lass? Sore? Still sick?”
She shakes her head, cuddling into his chest. “I feel much better.”
“We figured out how X was tracking her,” Kenta says, dropping onto the sofa. “It was Julie.” He gives us a quick rundown of everything that happened during their breakfast meeting.
When he finishes, I swear. “That greedy, money-hungry, self-serving little piece of shit. She almost got Briar killed, for what? A bigger paycheck?”
“Do you think Nin will want the job?” Briar asks, plopping down next to Kenta and picking up the TV remote. “I promise I won’t shout at her again.”
“I think she’d love it. She’s definitely qualified.”
“Great.” She starts flipping through TV channels. “Maybe I can have a positive impact ononeperson’s life. I got a lot of people hurt last night.”
Kenta frowns. “Briar, none of what happened was your fault. It was X who rigged the bombs. You didn’t even know what he was planning before it was too late.”
She sighs. “Yeah, yeah. I know. Doesn’t stop me feeling like shit.” She stops on a news channel playing a piece on the premiere bombing. I’m not surprised she found one so easily. It’s by far the biggest news story in LA. It’s probably being shown on repeat.
