Ringo’s arms wrapped around me.“I got you.You’re safe.”
I couldn’t breathe.They were everywhere.At the windows, lurking in the shadows, and even inside my home.
“Ellie!”Ringo shook me.
I stared at his face.It was familiar, but also not.The concern was new.If I could, I’d lie to him and tell him it would be all right.I gasped for air, panting in the darkness.
“It’s okay.”
Was it?
My mind cataloged the surroundings.The bed, Ringo, the fancy vases on the nightstands, the gun hanging off the headboard within easy reach.The hilt of a dagger that had slid out from under Ringo’s pillow.
I was in the woods.Deep in his realm where it was anything but safe.
My breathing calmed.I drifted a bit, leaning on him as the rush from hyperventilating sent tingles through my body that bordered on pain.“Thank you.”
He exhaled and the warmth of his breath caressed my scalp as his lips brushed against my hairline.
“You’re not kidding about those nightmares.Venice wasn’t like this.”
No, it hadn’t been.I’d only had the beginning of one that night.It startled me awake like a bullet.And in the aftermath, the adrenaline rush made me cling to his body for more than just comfort.I needed an outlet or validation that I was alive.Flight or fuck, Kat called it.She had her own trauma growing up.We clung together and learned unorthodox coping mechanisms to deny admitting our childhoods had broken us.
One was spitting in the world's face.When life hands you lemons, put ’em in a bazooka to blast them back at their owners.
“I’m okay now.”While I spoke the right words, I didn’t push him away like I should have.
Part of me wondered why I didn’t.
Ringo rubbed my back in little soothing circles.“That’s good.Can I ask what was chasing you?”
“The FBI.”
His reaction was about as I expected.He shifted to hold me at arm’s length to check whether I was joking or not.
The trouble was I wasn’t joking.
“From your childhood?”
He knew about that because Allie talked.I never did.Or tried not to.My make-believe had gone on so long that I’d almost managed to block it all out.Along with big gaps of memory that may or may not have occurred like Allie claimed it did.Those experiences and stories were hers.Mine were a black void.It wasn’t until I met Kat and started getting in trouble that my actual memories started.It was like I hadn’t existed before that point.
Except for the dreams.Ones Allie swore didn’t happen.I was never lost in the woods.I never was chased by agents in the middle of the night.And I certainly wasn’t abducted from the house in a black panel van one winter night.But those things played on repeat in my nightmares.
Sometimes I even wondered if the nightmare in Venice was real.
“Tell me I’m not crazy.Please?”
His hand cupped my face and then burrowed into my hair in such a tantalizing caress I leaned into it.Ringo shook his head and uttered one word.“Babe.”
“I remember things that aren’t real.And I don’t know if some thingsarereal.Like Venice.There were pictures, so it had to be real, right?”
His fingers tightened.“Tell me what you think you remember.”
“We spent that first day doing touristy stuff like the gondola ride, where you knocked my phone into the water.”I was never going to let that one go.
He grimaced.“And?”
“And then you had to leave.So, I went to the hotel and had room service.The next morning, I had coffee and those funky fried donuts that tasted like oranges with raisins in the dough.I like the chocolate-filled ones better.”
