Lance stretched his fingers beneath the straps of Lynnette’s dress. “Just establishing boundaries.”
That really shouldn’t have been sexy, but it was so incredibly satisfying to watch Claire’s face as she processed everything Lance had said to her. The way her eyes widened and darted in too many directions. The way her skin flushed and paled. It all happened in seconds before, finally, Claire backstepped and dipped her chin.
Lynnette couldn’t help her smile as Lance pulled her to him and buried his face in the crook of her throat. He’d kept his promise. He’d come back to her in one perfect, functional, piece.
Chapter twenty-five
Worth Fighting For
On the third nightafter the chaos, Lynnette was jarred awake from a dreamless slumber. Groggy and heavy-lidded, she blinked her eyes open in an attempt to see through her darkened bedroom. She didn’t understand what had woken her.
Not until the man wrapped around her let out a low, pained groan. He sucked in a hard breath as realization dawned in her mind, and the next thing Lynnette knew, Lance had flipped completely over and rolled to the floor.
Alarmed, Lynnette threw the comforter aside and scrambled across the mattress to better see. And her heart lodged in her throat.
Lance was on his knees, parallel to the mattress and hunched forward, hands clasped over the back of his head. His body trembled with every unsteady breath, but no other sound or movement escaped him. For a man so large and so naturally intimidating, it was hard to believe he’d made himself so small.
Harder still to see.
Lynnette climbed carefully from the bed so she could maneuver around to squeeze herself at least somewhat in front of him. She didn’t want to approach him from behind when he was obviously distressed, possibly not even awake, and entirely liable to lash out on reflex. The latter was an unavoidable concern, but at least she could minimize her risk. She hoped.
She had to twist her torso a little sideways to squish herself between his hunched shoulders and the nightstand, but she ignored the discomfort. “Lance,” she said, keeping her voice gentle. Her heart wanted so badly to reach for him, but she knew better. So, she curled her fingers into her palms to hold herself back. “Lance, baby, look at me. Please.”
His next breath seemed to shake worse.
We’ll definitely be talking about therapy later.One more night of this misery was one more than she ever wanted to see him endure. First, though, she had to wake him up.
Lynnette forced herself to relax as best she could and slowly reached out, willfully ignoring every syllable of advice she’d ever heard on not doing exactly what she was doing. No one won if she just left him to suffer through whatever he was re-living.
And that was assuming he didn’t start to spark.
So, with the gentlest touch she was capable of, Lynnette laid the tips of her fingers on his exposed forearm. It wasn’t a grip, it wouldn’t feel like a restraint, and hopefully it wouldn’t trigger any associated responses. If anything, it might feel like a passing bug or the shift of fabric his mind may have convinced him he was wearing. Still, she kept herself moving, nice and slow. “Lance,” she whispered again. “Wake up. Come back to me. Everything’s okay.”
He went still as her light touch neared his elbow.
“Lance,” she repeated.
Tension rolled through him and he exhaled roughly, but the sound was different. His body didn’t shake. His fingersunlatched. “Fuck.” That single, gruff, agitated word rumbled from him as the weight of the air changed. Then, finally, his arms dropped.
Lynnette withdrew her own in case he needed a moment. She watched the way he pressed his knuckles to the floor. The way he kept his head bent.
Seconds passed before Lance shifted himself to drop onto his ass and scrub a hand down his face, as if he couldn’t bear to look around, or didn’t want to be seen, but also didn’t have the strength to walk off. His chest continued to heave, but his breaths were steadier.
Lynnette watched for another beat, then decided he was awake enough. It was one thing if he didn’t want to talk about whatever nightmare he’d had—she couldn’t claim to understand it fully, but she’d seen her dad struggle with PTSD long enough to understand what that did to a man. She would offer her support when he was ready to hear it. In the meantime, she needed to make it clear the one thing she wouldn’t tolerate. So, she scooted herself around until the bed was at her back and pressed herself up against his side. She looped an arm through his and laid her head on his shoulder, trying to show him that she was there. And that he didn’t get to pull away just because she’d glimpsed a less glamorous side of him.
He didn’t speak right away. Seconds passed before he even relaxed into her or laid his other hand over where she’d clasped hers on his arm. But, eventually, his breathing calmed and it became hard to tell who was truly leaning into whom.
“Sorry,” he finally whispered. “Sometimes, the nightmares … overwhelm me.”
Lynnette frowned and gave his arm a squeeze. “Don’t apologize,” she whispered back. “I probably can’t imagine some of the things you’ve seen.Ihave nightmares sometimes, just from the second-hand trauma of some of what I’ve witnessed asa nurse. Especially when I worked in the ER.” The shit people did to themselves was horrifying, honestly. “I just want you to know I’m here for you, however I can be.” She tilted her head a little and pressed her lips to the bare shoulder beneath her chin.
He kissed the top of her head, his exhale tickling the back of her ear. “About a decade ago,” he said, still speaking quietly and making no other effort to move, “I was sent on a job that went bad. I mean, shit goes sideways all the time, but not like that.”
Lynnette pressed her lips firmly together to keep from interrupting. If he was talking without prompting, then he probably needed to release whatever the story was. The least she could do was dutifully listen, so as to help him carry the burden of it moving forward. Because she felt sure, just from the tone in his voice, that it would be a burden.
“Standard shit, I guess. Didn’t know we’d entered a minefield. A good half of our unit was out, just like that.” He paused and she felt his fists flex. “I got thrown clear with the first blast, so I was kinda fucked up but okay. Wasn’t much we could do but wait for extraction, and we were too far in for that to be quick. Those of us who could manage had to keep on-guard for night attacks.”
The scene that unfolded in her mind played out like an old war movie. The type that drew the audience straight into the thick of it and locked them there while the hard parts unfolded in real time. And she had a whole new appreciation for why her mother had refused to watch those kinds of movies when she was younger, because suddenly she never wanted to see another one again.
