by Tawny Weber
He was on his feet, moving toward the screaming before he was fully awake, before he even knew where he was. A man like him was taught to react. It could be the difference between life and death.
So he got to the screamer, his hands, hard, hanging onto...
Her.
He wasn't in a war zone.
He was in Cincinnati in a hotel room with Amanda.
She screamed and fought him for all she was worth, kicking, trying to claw his face.
What the fuck had happened?
She'd had her hands all over him and her mouth—he groaned, even now, just thinking about it—and then tried to get back to the moment, to figure out what happened. They'd had sex. It had felt so good for him and, he thought, okay for her.
She'd fallen asleep in his arms. He'd slept, too.
And woke up to this.
He let go of her and backed away, hands held up in front of him, palms up, no threat here. She didn't seem to believe him. He didn't think she even knew who he was, and he'd heard these sounds from her before.
In Buhkai.
"Amanda," he said, trying talking to her instead. "It's me. It's Will. We're not in Buhkai anymore. You're safe. With me."
She backed herself all the way into the corner and then, still wild-eyed, stopped screaming.
"It's okay," he said, taking a step toward her.
She moaned and tried to press herself harder back into the corner, and he backed up again.
Jesus, he wanted to touch her. He needed to. To hold her, to make this okay.
Had he done something in his sleep that scared her? If he'd gotten his arm locked around her and she couldn't get loose, that would likely terrify her.
So he stayed away and kept talking to her, trying to de-escalate this. He was trained to do this, to deal with people having flashbacks. It was just so hard to see her so scared, especially scared of him, and not be able to fix it.
He shouldn't have brought her here. He should have refused. She wasn't ready for this. They'd done too much too soon. He should have known better. He beat himself up while he kept trying to calm her down.
Finally, she looked like she actually saw him, like she knew who he was, at least, if not where they were and what had happened. Although, they were both naked at the moment, in a hotel room. He hoped that didn't make it worse, make her remember what had terrified her in the first place.
"What happened?" she whispered finally.
"I don't know. I woke up, and you were screaming. I think I made it worse by grabbing you and trying to... help, but obviously, I didn't. I just... I don't know."
She grabbed a pillow off the bed and used it to hide herself as best she could from his gaze, and because he thought it would make her feel better, he did the same.
"I don't know, either," she said, looking heartbreakingly sad.
"I... Amanda? Can I come closer? Can I hold you? Would that help?"
She shook her head, but then she started moving. He thought she'd changed her mind and was coming to him. Instead, she bolted into the bathroom and just made it to the toilet before she started retching. He could hear it, but he couldn't see her, because she'd pushed the door closed.
And locked it, he realized, when he tried to open it.
Jesus, what had he fucking done?
"Amanda? Can I—"
"Go away!" she cried. "Go!"
So, he did.
He went back to the bed and sat down, but that was too close to all the memories of what they'd done there. So he got up and pulled his pants on.
He'd somehow terrified the woman crying and throwing up in the bathroom. He felt nastily close to panic himself, something he never did. Bullets, bombs, blood, helicopters going down, severed limbs? He could deal with all of them.
Amanda, terrified and shaking, crying and locked away in the bathroom, looking at him like he was a monster? He was seriously freaking out.
He wanted Emma, he realized. She would know what he should do.
He grabbed his phone and called. Her husband, Rye, answered, sounding grumpy as hell.
"It's Will. I need your wife."
"Do you know what time it is?"
"No. I need her. I... one of her patients needs her."
"Her patients don't call this number. They call her service—"
And then, he was gone. Emma came onto the line.
"What's wrong?"
He had to tell her. "It's Amanda. She's locked herself into the bathroom, throwing up and crying."
"What happened?"
"We had sex. Twice. She wanted to. She made me," he said, too late to hold that little gem of a justification back. "Okay, could you forget about that last part?"
She sighed and said, "Sure. Why not."
"Everything was fine. We fell asleep. I woke up and she was screaming and scared half to death of me."
"So, she either remembered something or she had a flashback," Emma said.
"Yeah. I guess so. What do I do? She doesn't want me near her."
"Then stay away—"
"Emma?"
"She wants you to stay away, you stay away. If you two are going to be together, you need to know this sort of thing happens to people who've been sexually assaulted."
"She was fine," he said, feeling ridiculous even as he said it.
"I suspect you've had some experience with people with PTSD. With flashbacks."
"Yes."
"Then you know about things like this, Will. It happens."
"She was fine," he said again, as if that would make it true. "Did we do this too soon? Is that what happened?"
"If you had sex twice, and she was okay, you must have been doing something right. But what she went through isn't the kind of thing you get over because you have sex once or twice, and it was okay. It doesn't work like that. Healing is a process. Sometimes you go forward. Sometimes you go back. It's going to take a while until you figure out what her triggers are, what takes her back there, and then you'll know what not to do, when to be careful."
"I was careful. I made sure of that—"
"Then it's something you don't know yet that was the trigger. You'll figure it out."
"Jesus," he said.
"I know. It's hard."
He tried to think. What had happened? Something must have happened. He had to remember, so he'd know not to do it again. "I think, maybe, right before she started screaming... I think some of her hair got caught under my arm. She might have been trying to move, and she couldn't. She might have thought I was hanging onto her by her hair."
"Okay. Don't pull her hair."
"Sure. Don't roll over in my sleep or move my arm, and she can't move her head, either—"
"Will, this is how it's going to be."
"Yeah. Okay." He let that settle inside. This was how it was going to be. Well then, he'd deal with it. He'd figure it out. He'd promised her.
"What do I do?"
"About what?"
"Her locked in the bathroom, throwing up."
"You wait until she's done and comes out, and then you talk to her, if she wants to talk. She might be embarrassed. Go easy. You sound like you think it's a disaster, and that attitude isn't going to do her any good right now. It's just what happened. Be calm. Be reassuring. Matter-of-fact. Deal with it."
"Okay. I can do that," he said, although... shit, he wasn't at all sure he could. Why had he thought he could? Take care of her? Do what she needed?
He'd never been able to take care of a woman in his life, to keep one safe, to fix one. To this point, he'd been able to do what Amanda needed. She was held hostage. That was something he could fix. She needed to get out of that shithole of a country in Africa. He was her guy. She needed him to stay with her. Take care of her. Was he crazy? He couldn't do that.
"Okay," Emma said. "If she needs me, have her call. I'll be here."
He was thanking her when he heard a loud knock on the hotel room door. "Mr. Gerard? Hotel security. We need to come in, Sir."
<
br /> Shit.
Chapter 21
Will couldn't blame them, much as he hated the added drama. It had probably sounded like someone had been attacked in here.
He walked to the door, trying to get ready to explain.
The security guard had apparently heard an earful from some of their neighbors on the floor, and the look he directed at Will reminded him of the way people used to look at him when he was a mad-as-hell teenager. He'd forgotten what it was like, having people see him that way. No one had done it in a long time.
No matter what Will said, the man wouldn't leave until he saw Amanda and heard straight from her that she was okay, that Will hadn't hurt her. Telling the man that Amanda had been assaulted five months ago and had a flashback wouldn't do it.
Again, Will couldn't blame the guy. He just didn't want to make Amanda open the door, force her to deal with a man, a stranger, as upset as she already was.
"Is there a woman she could talk to?" he finally asked, and luckily, the manager on duty was a woman.
Amanda, shivering and exhausted, lay on the bathroom floor.
It was porcelain tile, or maybe marble, and it was cold, she realized eventually. She crawled onto the fluffy little cream-colored rug and grabbed a bath towel to use as a blanket.
Tears rolled down her cheeks. She didn't know what had happened, except that she'd tried to move and couldn't, had felt trapped and desperate to get away, and then she'd started screaming.
Next there were hands on her. She was caught hard by the arms by someone so much bigger and stronger than she was, someone in the shadows who she couldn't see, and then, miraculously, he'd let her go and turned into Will.
Will, baffled and worried and naked, across the room from her, trying to convince her that he wasn't going to hurt her.
Of course he wasn't.
She knew that, and yet... she couldn't quite accept it and come fully into the present.
The next thing she knew, she was heaving into the toilet.
Now she was just cold and exhausted and bewildered.
What had happened?
Will came back to the door, trying to get her to talk to him again. She knew she should, but what in the world could she say? Her face burned at the idea of even looking him in the eye again.
"Honey, I'm sorry, but some people in the room across the hall heard the commotion and called security."
She sat up, aghast. "What?"
"Security," he said. "I'm sorry, but they're here, in the room, and they're not going to leave until they see you and you tell them you're okay."
If they saw her, they'd be even more worried, she feared. It sounded worse to her than facing him. "Will, make them go away—"
"I'm sorry. I've tried. They're worried that I've hurt you, Amanda."
Of course. She had been screaming her head off, after all.
"There's a woman here, okay? She's right outside the bathroom door. I'll go stand near the door to the hall, and I'll take the other man with me. So it'll be just you and her, but you have to open the door and talk to her, honey."
Amanda stood up, still shaky on her own legs. Even in the faint light in the bathroom, she looked like a woman who'd been through hell. It was a look she knew well, from the times she'd caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror soon after escaping from Buhkai.
She splashed cold water on her face, rinsed her mouth out, finger-combed her hair down, grabbed the big white robe resting on the long vanity and put it on. Then she forced herself to open the door.
The woman was older, wearing a hotel uniform and a name-tag that said Janet. She looked alarmed at the sight of Amanda and said, "Ma'am, do you need help?"
Amanda shook her head no.
"We need to make sure you're okay. Can you tell me what happened?"
Amanda didn't think anything except the entire truth would do. She looked too awful, and the woman in front of her looked too worried. Plus, she couldn't let anyone think Will hurt her.
So she told the woman about being held hostage in Buhkai. "And that man out there? He's the one who saved me. I wouldn't be alive today without him. He would never hurt me."
That satisfied the nice lady from the hotel, who recognized Amanda now. She'd seen Amanda's story on TV.
Amanda apologized again for the commotion, and the woman left, taking a man in a hotel uniform with her, leaving no one but Will. He stood all the way across the room in nothing but his pants.
Oh, he looked worried, more worried than she thought she'd ever seen him, and so kind it nearly made her start to cry all over again. She couldn't let herself do that to him. She'd already scared him half to death. He was afraid to even come closer, she realized, and he would never want to have sex with her again. He was lucky the security guard hadn't called the police and had him arrested.
God.
"I am so sorry," she said.
"Hey, it's okay." She knew he'd say that. Anything she did, no matter how much of a mess she was, was okay with him. He rolled with it. It was amazing.
And had to be exhausting. She'd exhausted herself with all her tears, her sadness, her fears, her emotions soaring and plummeting so fast they made her head spin.
Why was he even still here with her?
She felt like the most pathetic person in the world, and he was Will, strong and calm and steady as could be.
"So, this has got to win the prize as worst weekend you've ever had with a woman, right?"
"Not even close," he claimed.
"Will?"
"I'm serious. I've gone out with a couple of seriously crazy women. You're a piece of cake." He'd been smiling at first—forced, no doubt—but then he looked worried again. "Can I come over there? I won't touch you, not if you don't want me to, but let me get a little closer, okay?"
"Will, you don't have to keep doing this."
"Doing what?"
"This. It's okay. You can go—"
"I'm not going anywhere, Amanda. I'll stay all the way across the room, if you want me to. I won't say anything until you're ready to talk. But I'm not leaving."
Oh, he could be so stubborn. "I know this is so much more than you signed up for."
He folded his arms in front of his chest, leaned his shoulder against the wall and, if possible, looked even more stubborn than before. "I'm not leaving."
She wanted to smack that look off his face, wanted to hit something in a way that shocked her, and she wanted him to hold her, but wasn't sure if she could stand the idea of anyone—even him—touching her.
"I don't understand what happened," she said instead, nearly crying again.
"Flashback. It happens."
Matter-of-fact as could be. Like she'd broken a glass or something. Oops. All those pieces, sharp enough to cut you and make you bleed.
She felt like she was bleeding from a million little cuts. Not just blood, but her memories, her feelings, stinging as they seeped out.
"Amanda, it's not a big deal."
"I terrified people in the rooms around us, woke them up, brought hotel security to our room. They thought you hurt me, Will. I hate that. I can't stand it, that they looked at you and thought you hurt me."
He shrugged. "Things happen. We straightened it out. It's over. Let it go."
"I didn't think I'd be this scared again. You know, after the first time. I thought if I could get past that... And we did, and it was good. Parts of it were so good—"
"And it will be again," he said.
"I feel like I'm torturing you—"
"Well, asking me not to touch you while you've got your hands and that gorgeous mouth of yours all over me? That's asking a lot, but, you know? Some women are into that sort of thing. Torturing men in bed, ordering them around. It's not normally my thing, but for you, I'm willing to give it my best shot."
"You know that's not what I meant."
"Honey, if this is your idea of torture? You all over me, and me not doing anything? Seriously, I'm okay with it. Men would line up for the c
hance."
No, they wouldn't. For the sex part, if that's all it was, sex games. But this wasn't a game, and he knew it. He had promised to help her, to give her whatever she needed, and he had, with patience and understanding and even humor, a kindness and steadiness she'd never found in any man.
It only made her love him more, need him more, and now more than ever, she was truly scared she wouldn't be able to convince him to stay. Not just temporarily, to help her through this, but forever.
She wanted Will forever.
And yet, look at what she'd be asking him to take on. Her at her absolute worst. And who knew when it would get better? What kind of man would sign up for that? Even if he did love her and want the kind of relationship she knew Will didn't?
It was hopeless.
"I didn't think it would be this much trouble," she said.
He laughed. "Women are a lot of trouble. This is not a surprise to me. Now, can I come over there?"
She nodded.
He moved slowly, giving her time. She took a shaky breath as he folded her gently into his arms. She leaned her head against his shoulder and suddenly felt impossibly weary.
"I think I want to go to sleep now," she said, even as she snuggled against his warmth.
"Okay. You want the bed to yourself?"
"Yes. No. I don't know. Do you have any idea what happened before?"
"I'm not certain, but I think your hair got caught beneath my arm, and when you tried to move, you couldn't."
She thought about that, being caught by her hair, someone holding her in place against her will by her hair. The idea definitely scared her, but it didn't bring up any specific memory.
"I'll cut my hair again," she said. She'd shave her head to keep from going through that again.
"Okay, but for now?"
She wanted to be close to him. She hated sleeping alone, considered it a real self-indulgence to be able to sleep with him in bed beside her. But she didn't want to freak out again.
She walked over to the bed, and he did, too. He waited for her to tell him what she wanted. If her hair was the problem...