by Riley Moreno
“Come in.”
As promised, he appeared with a glass of water, and he set it at the nightstand at her side.
“In case you get thirsty, you won’t have to look too far.”
She remembered too many nights when she had awoken from one nightmare only to find herself still trapped in another when the smallest taste of water would have offered a kind of salvation in the face of her misery. None was provided, and her mouth stayed dry as she wept at its absence.
“Thank you,” she said.
He grazed his fingers through her hair.
“Sleep well, Juliet. See you in the morning.”
As he left her again, Julie’s head fell back to the pillow. This wasn’t the bed she had envisioned, but her own room was too close to her parents and too full of memories of Kim. Only this unfamiliar place allowed her the ability to surrender to sleep.
But the bad dreams still came.
Julie was slammed back into a place where Pete and Matt hovered over her bound body. Matt was like a zombie, glassy eyed, his face streaked with streams of blood and pus. But Pete’s legs were intact. He didn’t press his body into hers, but Julie felt the dead captor grasping her throat with wet hands that didn’t ask permission for anything as she was entered with what felt like ice. Julie couldn’t scream, and it was like she’d never been saved. Like that had been the dream.
“Leave me alone! Go away. Oh God, no!”
She was still trapped in the vision when warmer hands surrounded her body and held her close.
“Juliet! Shhh. It’s okay. I’m right here.”
Shocked awake, she blinked hard at the sight of Ethan trying to hold her even as she struggled. For a second, his eyes were just another in a long line that had leered at with malice, and she batted him back as he kept trying to take her in his arms.
“Juliet, it’s me!”
“Please no more!”
“It’s me. You’re safe now.”
She continued to flail as he finally clutched her face, taking care around her bandage, and pressed it to his.
“Look at me.”
The nightmare started to fall away as Julie stared into the eyes of her savior, and when she recognized him, when she remembered, she fell against him with a series of wracking sobs. Ethan held her as she sputtered out apologies and tried to return to a place where she could make sense of what had happened.
“I’ve got you,” he assured her. “No one’s getting in here.”
She cried into his arm as he stroked her hair. As he repeatedly told her that she was it was over, Julie remembered all of the rescue and grabbed his arms in gratitude.
“Ethan?”
“I’m right here. It’s okay.”
And slowly, very slowly, it was. As much as it could be. When she glanced over his shoulder, she thought she saw Pete smirking in a shadowy corner, and she shuddered against Ethan before lifting her eyes again.
Pete was nowhere to be seen, and Julie held Ethan closer. He had done so much, but Julie still needed more of his help.
“Don’t leave me. Please.”
Ethan eased her back to the bed. He never let her go as they fell together.
“You just sleep. No more bad dreams. It’ll be morning before you know it.”
She cried until she couldn’t and started to relax within his arms. Sleep still seemed the enemy, the place where she could be recaptured, but Julie was able to find it again, peacefully, when she was in his arms.
19
The nightmares stayed at bay as Julie finally slept. Her dreams were dull, vacant, but the absence of harm, either real or imagined, was enough to give her the first real rest in too many to months to count, and the vibration of Ethan’s breath was enough to guide her towards the morning. At various intervals, she felt his hands on her head, her neck, and while everything that had happened still caused her to flinch, she swiftly settled back into his arms, and she relaxed as he folded her closer. The feel of any other hands would have sent her into a state of panic, but it was different with Ethan. He kept his hands light as he whispered assurances into her ear, and Julie fought back the most awful memories and rested her head against his chest. To be in the arms of a man should only mean more torment, but Ethan took care to be kind each time she was roused from a much needed slumber.
He really didn’t sleep.
Julie blinked back the light of the morning and saw Ethan’s eyes gazing down at her. When their eyes locked, he started to rise. It was if he had been found out and hoped that he could erase the moment of discovery, but Julie found the courage to touch his face and keep his eyes on hers.
“Ethan?”
As he sat on the edge of the bed, Julie curled towards him and took his hand.
“Were you up all night?’” she asked even as she knew the answer.
“I don’t need it. I… got the rest I needed.”
“What do you mean?”
His hold strengthened around her hand.
“Because you slept.”
Julie rubbed his face with a sigh. Even as a small part of her believed his words, the permanent dark circles still lingered under his bleary eyes. She should ask him if he wanted to lie down and try to catch a few winks, and she…
“At least let me make you breakfast.”
Julie left the bed, glad for a task upon which she could focus her full attention. She would craft an omelet, fry up some bacon, and---
Save for the few beers they hadn’t cracked open, the fridge was empty. Julie stared hard and tried to will a banquet into existence as she heard his footsteps enter the room.
“Um… guess this is easier said than done,” she said.
He blushed at the face of what he was lacking and gave her an apologetic shrug.
“There’s coffee,” he offered.
Julie eyed the can of Folgers and the carafe just waiting for the bubbling, brown brew. Coffee sounded fine, but he should really have something more substantial.
“Or… or I could take you to breakfast or---”
He stopped himself as she quickly shook her head.
“Right. No diners. So…”
Julie scratched her head and scanned the apartment. He had said it was his home, and her home, before it became an unwelcome terrain, was a place where she ate the breakfast prepared by her mother before Kim showed up for the ride to nowhere. She wanted something of that moment back.
“Where’s the nearest store?” she asked him.
“Market down the block. Overpriced as all hell. But---”
“Fine. I’ll get dressed.”
She had to keep moving, and she slipped out of her pajamas and stepped into a pair of jeans and a light blue blouse. When she remerged in her sandals, Ethan, still wearing the clothes in which he had slept, already had his keys in his hand.
“Okay. Let’s go.”
Following him down the steps, she paused briefly before Nick’s door, and Ethan saw the sudden slouch in her shoulders.
“Don’t worry. He won’t bother you again. And… and he’s really harmless.”
“Then why did you freak out?” she asked.
“He scared you. Right?”
Julie looked down at her toes, still blistered from all that running before he had gifted her his shoes. Her gaze stayed there as stepped back into the foyer.
“Juliet?”
“Yes,” she whispered as she lifted her head.
“No more of that, okay?”
“But I… I don’t want to make any more trouble for you.”
He took her shoulders lightly and stared into her eyes.
“You’re never any trouble. And besides, I’ll square it with him later. You ready?” he asked as he extended his hand.
“Yeah.”
Walking down the bustling city streets on a Friday morning, Julie was struck by the sense that everyone around her was barely bemoaning the workday because the weekend was just over the horizon. Come five o’clock, they would celebrate another week, f
inally finished, with dates and drinks and dreams that would seem real until Sunday grew late and heralded the return to normalcy. If only they knew that some people suffered without calendars and clocks and couldn’t look forward to the break that never came. She was seized by the memory of a man with bronzed skin and dark hair who wanted her chained to that night’s four poster bed and kept returning with the promise that he’d keep it up until sunrise. And he did. Night shifting into morning carried no real transition. It was only a promise of pain, awfully fulfilled, and she couldn’t stay upright under the weight of the recollection.
“Juliet?”
She was on the sidewalk, on her knees, and an elderly woman walking her tiny dachshund told her to watch it as she plowed past her and the little dog yelped. Julie felt as if she was paralyzed as Ethan dragged her from the concrete and settled her on another stoop.
“What?”
Julie didn’t answer as people just kept passing by, consumed with their own lives and their supposed problems. She used to like to tell herself that a person shouldn’t judge. Everyone had their own stuff to deal with, and one’s own problems had the power to surpass whatever was happening to anyone else. She had managed to do it after her father’s death by thinking that everyone had lost someone, and yet they carried on. That kind of loss touched everyone. What she had undergone was different. Very different. Far beyond most people’s comprehension. This was her first moment truly out in the world since the rescue, and she was struck by the fear that she’d never be able to walk simple streets without looking over her shoulder and recalling what had happened.
“Do… do you want to go back?” Ethan asked.
She did. She wanted the comfort of his place because it was safe. She wanted to hide within his walls and conceal her body under the blankets. But then she thought of Kim. Fearless, throwing caution to the wind in the face of whatever might have crossed her path. If Julie, if someone, had had the power to outline the end of her last adventure, she never would have revved up the Camry on that fateful morning. But looking into the future was impossible and staying in the past kept people in the same place without any hope of moving forward. And Julie wanted to move from the chains, from the men, from the fear. The only way to do that was to try to rejoin the human race and manage to accomplish something as normal as purchasing groceries. There it was. It was a simply task, and she was up to it.
“No,” Julie finally said.
Ethan smiled as he helped her back to her feet, and they continued down the sidewalk.
Overpriced was an understatement. $7.99 for a gallon of milk was extravagant, but Ethan placed the plastic container into the basket that she had collected from the door and added a carton of eggs, a ham steak, and some Kraft cheese to the bundle. Julie paused before a pack of ready-made cookie dough and followed his lead.
“For breakfast?” he asked with a gentle laugh.
“No. But you’re right.”
She returned the package to its cold shelf and added flour and butter and vanilla extract and everything else to the basket. The chocolate chips were last, and even though Julie knew that she was likely to burn the batch in his oven, she now had another task to focus on once their breakfast was prepared and consumed. Satisfied, she led the way to the counter. The wrinkled cashier scanned each item, and Ethan paid for groceries with a swipe of plastic. They collected the plastic bags and hit the street again.
Ethan stayed close to her as they turned the corner and winded their way back to his building. Julie still felt strangers’ eyes looking at her like she was a figure for defilement, but a blonde girl regarded her bandage with a swift, slight wince. She didn’t know what had happened or why or how awful it had truly been. Her eyes just seemed to register the injury, and she smiled as Julie tried to shield the bandage from her view with a quick swipe of her hair. As she looked back over her shoulder, the girl’s smile was still in place for the few seconds before all of her attention returned to a notification from her phone. As glad as Julie was for the girl’s casual eyes expressing a moment of concern for the covered gash, it felt even better when she kept moving as if to tell Julie that she knew she’d be okay because she was still standing, walking, doing something so mundane as getting ready to make breakfast. Once again, she was something of anonymous, her shame unknown to the masses, and she smiled slightly as Ethan’s eyes fell across her face.
“How about that,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
Ethan tried to brush it off, but Julie pressed him for an explanation.
“If it does you this much good, we’ll go shopping every morning.”
Every morning. Every used to be something she dreaded, but her heart lightened at the idea that every could translate to a future, and she was feeling even better as they stepped up Ethan’s stoop and he unlocked the front door.
Nick heard their approach and opened his door before they were barely over the threshold. She drew a deep breath at the sight of him, and everything seemed to go black again as she shrunk behind Ethan’s back. Ethan resumed a protective stance, but even he relaxed as Nick stuffed his hands into pockets and shifted his stare to the floor.
“Um… Ethan?”
Julie’s eyes moved up Ethan’s arms until she saw his eyes, still tense, but also waiting for whatever Nick would say.
“Sorry,” Nick said. “Guess I… guess I don’t know my way around a… a lady. So I’m sorry.”
He clumsily bowed his head to Julie.
“Sorry… miss.”
Julie stepped forward and stared at him hard. Something told her that he was harmless. He was a player to be sure, but like Ethan, his stomach would have turned if he had found her captive. But she doubted that he would have matched Ethan’s bravery and shown her out of hell.
But what was extraordinary about Ethan, to Ethan, didn’t mean that she couldn’t try to make friends. So she stepped forward and offered acceptance with touching one inch of him. That was still too much.
One step at a time.
“Nick?”
He seemed shocked by his name on her tongue.
“It is Nick. Right?”
He nodded and started explaining everything away again, but Julie just pressed her fingers to her lips. And she smiled softly.
“It’s okay. Don’t give it a second thought.”
She hoped that just saying that would keep making it real for her. Nick was suddenly awash in relief, and Ethan looked at her, believed her, and then he patted Nick’s shoulder before returning his hand to Julie’s.
“What she said.”
It was enough for Nick, enough for Julie, and they left Nick in his doorway as they ascended the steps.
Returning was like the homecoming she had been denied. Ethan’s place was new and yet familiar. Julie was glad to be back, and she set about cracking the eggs and frying the ham steak in a skillet.
“Can I do anything to help?” Ethan asked.
Julie smiled shyly.
“The coffee. You’re the expert there, right?”
Ethan obliged and sought out the filters. This was nice. Just making breakfast and with someone who cared enough to fight for her. Julie started to feel something that she thought was happy as she placed their plates on the table. Ethan inhaled the aroma of her attempt at breakfast, and one taste told Julie that she was triumphant as her own fork hit the meal.
And then the knock came.
Julie started from her seat, but Ethan signaled for her to stay in her chair as he moved forward and pressed his ear to the door.
She heard it, too.
“I’m---”
“I think that they don’t want to be disturbed.”
“They know me.”
“Are they expecting you?”
“Not exactly, but---”
“But nothing. I think you should go.”
“Sir---”
“They just want to be alone.”
Ethan’s eyes returned to Julie’s, and his gaze confi
rmed Nick’s outburst. He did want to just be with her, and that knowledge fortified Julie even as she knew the voice just down the steps and the need to answer its questions. For some, the nightmare needed explaining.
Julie wearily rose to her feet and nodded for Ethan to intervene. With just one glance, he opened the door and headed down the steps. Julie pressed her hair behind her ears and listened to Ethan’s voice explain the necessity of the intruder’s presence. Nick finally obliged and closed his door as a two sets of footsteps made their way back to Ethan’s apartment.
And then she saw the black braid of Connie Morales hanging over her shoulder. Ethan looked defeated by the reality that even he couldn’t keep what had happened at bay, but Julie lapsed back into what was and showed Morales to the couch. Julie sat two seats away from her and folded her arms around her body.
“Hanging in there, Julie?”
She nodded and told herself that this was just one more moment to get though. She could do it. And once Morales was gone, Julie could return to the breakfast that they both deserved to enjoy.
“How did you know I was here?” Julie asked.
“Swung by your parents’ place.”
Morales’ eyes drifted towards Ethan’s hand and the faint bruises forming about his knuckles.
“Seems you have quite the left hook there, Mr. Graff.”
Julie thought of Greg nursing his battered jaw, and she was suddenly terrified that Morales was here because of Greg’s strange need to get her back under his roof and pump her for more information. The easiest way to bring that wish to life was to press charges and place Ethan behind bars with the men who had truly hurt her. The thought of losing him was almost too much to bear, but then she was also confronted by the idea that there would be payback if Ethan happened to find himself in the same prison yard with Carter McCord.
“You’re… you’re not going to take him away. Are you?”
Morales sighed as she placed her hand on Julie’s arm.
“Relax, Julie. That’s not why I’m here.”
And Julie was able to breathe, but Morales still had a story to tell.
“Peter Bowen?”
Julie shuddered at the thought of him, and Ethan assumed the place on the arm of the couch. He held Julie, all the time keeping his icy gaze on Morales.