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“No. I just didn’t want to be alone. I couldn’t sleep,” I admitted. We were in my room now, and Harris sat on the edge of the bed and settled me in his lap so I was facing him.
“Why didn’t you call for one of us, or send a message? I knew I shouldn’t have let you come up here alone,” he said, uttering the last part more to himself. He’d obviously had a bit to drink, because I could smell it on his breath and his voice was a little raspier and quieter than usual, but he wasn’t drunk.
“I…I don’t want them to know. It’s ridiculous for me to be scared to sleep alone,” I admitted.
“You mean your brothers?”
“Yeah. They always taught me to be brave and strong. I’m pretty far from that right now,” I scoffed.
“Ev, we’ve talked about this. Your brothers are so proud of everything you’ve overcome. They would never judge you or even be disappointed by anything you need to cope with the aftermath. You need to have more faith in them.”
“I know. I just…” Whatever I was about to say was cut off by a huge thud that made the walls shake, followed by a deep, terrifying roar.
“Shit!” Harris cursed as he set me on the bed and leapt to his feet.
“What’s going on?” I squeaked through my tight throat. “Is someone in the house?”
“It’s Nick. He’s having a nightmare. Can you grab Zack and get him downstairs? Nick’s nightmares can get pretty violent.”
“Y-yeah. Will Nick be okay?” I asked as I got to my feet, my legs shaking hard beneath me. Harris took my hand and pulled me to the door, opening it just slightly and looking into the hall.
“He’ll be fine, but it might take the three of us to calm him down,” Harris explained as he pulled me from my room and towards Zack’s. I didn’t want to waste time as more roars of anger and sounds of destruction came from Nick’s room, so I hurried in and gathered Zack into my arms. He was already awake and screaming blue murder at being awoken so abruptly.
“We ready for this?” Kailan was asking as he emerged from his room at the same time as Aleks came from his. They both looked sleepy.
“Fuck no, but do we have a choice?” Aleks groaned. He wasn’t wearing his glasses and he looked even younger without them.
“Stay downstairs until one of us comes to let you know it’s safe, yeah?” Harris told me as he leaned over and kissed my temple. I nodded, knowing anything I said would barely be heard over the racket Nick was making, then I hurried for the stairs, wanting to get Zack some place calmer and quieter.
I went straight to the kitchen to grab a juice box and some cookies from the refrigerator, then I headed for the home gym. It was the furthest space from the chaos above us, and I didn’t want Zack to hear his dad like that.
By the time I had us shut in the gym, Zack was screaming so hard he was turning colors, so I dumped everything and just sat on the floor to hold him. I cradled him tightly to me and babbled nonsense until finally he stopped crying and was just listening to me as he clutched his blue bunny tightly in his fist.
Once I got him settled on the floor between my legs with a cookie in his fist, he was back to his happy self, only he was now wide awake in the middle of the night. At least he wasn’t screaming though.
I leaned back against the cold mirror behind me and worried about Nick. What must he have suffered to go through a nightmare like that, even years later? What had they all been subjected to at the hands of those monsters?
I worried about how Nick would react when the guys calmed him and woke him up. Would he go straight for a drink, like he used to when I first arrived? He had come so far in the last couple of weeks. I didn’t want this to set him back.
After about twenty minutes Zack had devoured every morcel of the two cookies I had allowed him and the juice box was drained. Now he just looked sleepy, so I lay out a few towels on top of one another from the pile on the shelf and lay him on them, then curled up on my side around him. He cooed and reached for me for a few minutes, but then his eyes were heavy and within seconds he was asleep again, his bunny still clutched by its ears in his hand.
Once I was sure he was settled and comfortable I turned, star fishing on my back on the cold tile floor. I couldn’t stop worrying. Shouldn’t they have come down by now? What if one of the guys had gotten hurt and they didn’t want to tell me? Would there always be nights like this for all of us if things worked out in our relationship? Would there always be nights where one of us was losing our shit and trashing the house in our desperate attempts to flee the horrors of our pasts? If it was like that, could I handle it? Could they?
My thoughts were on a serious downward spiral when finally the door of the gym opened and Nick walked in. He looked unharmed, and he had obviously showered, his hair still wet.
Tears choked me as I jumped to my feet and ran to him, wrapping my arms around his neck and pressing my self as tightly as I could into his front.
“Are you okay?” I eventually managed to squeak out.
“Yeah. I’m so sorry, baby. Did I scare the shit out of you?” he asked as he wrapped his arms around me and held me back.
“Only because I was worried about you. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m sure. So are the others, though Harris might have a few bruises in the morning. It’s been a while since I had a night terror that bad,” he admitted.
“At least you didn’t hide in the garden,” I joked, thinking back to the night I had lost it and scared them all.
“Was Zack okay?”
