I stayed that way—stubbornly staring at the back of my eyelids—for what had to have been hours as Cary quietly moved around me.
I was so attune to him that I could feel his movements, could conjure up images as he quietly moved around, tidying up the space, flipping through his recipe book, texting on his phone, turning on the TV to a news station that I knew he could barely hear.
Then, finally, as he grabbed some clothes and moved into the bathroom. The water turned on a second later.
Try as I might—though, admittedly, I didn’t try all that hard—I couldn’t stop visions from playing across my mind.
Of him pulling off his cut, his tee, his jeans, of seeing that body he so carefully cultivated day in and day out on full display.
I would barely let myself even think it, always careful to push thoughts like that about Cary away, but I wanted to know what the rest of his tattoos looked like. I’d made a study of all the visible ones since we’d been in the hotel room together. I’d asked him the stories of several. But I knew there were more. Dozens more. Over his back, chest, his sides, and maybe even his thighs.
I wanted to see them.
I wanted to know why they existed.
And, yes, fine, I wanted to trace them with my fingertips.
God, I wanted to trace them with my tongue.
But that was so insane that I pushed the thought immediately away whenever it popped up.
Especially because he seemed really put off at the idea of me having any level of attraction to him.
Ugh.
My poor, beaten ego didn’t need that.
But there was no denying it, either.
I needed to get my head on right. I had to lock away any growing feelings I might have toward him. Especially since they were so clearly one-sided.
The sadness set in too quickly even to try to fight it off, leaving annoyingly persistent tears to creep out from under my lashes, wetting my cheeks and pillows until I heard the water shut off, and knew that he would see if I didn’t pull it together.
Eventually, at some point, I must have passed out from sheer boredom.
And that was when the nightmares started.
I’d been getting them since I left Raúl’s compound, to varying degrees of awfulness. The themes were always the same. Either I was still back there, still getting abused by him, or I was free, but he found me and was punishing me for getting away in the first place.
While the themes may have been the same, the length of the dreams, the clarity, and the perspective of them changed. The nights where I was more of a fly on the wall of it all weren’t so bad. The nights where I felt like I was inside my body, where I was experiencing the abuse, those were the worst nights.
The dreams that didn’t feel like dreams dragged on and on. I felt like I was choking on the fear, like I was feeling every punch, kick, lash, like my actual bones were cracking when Raúl threw me against the wall. Like I could feel his fingertips as he started to rip off my clothes.
It never went beyond that point before.
But this dream kept going. Until my clothes were gone. Until his hands were on me. Until his body was coming over mine.
No.
No.
I was screaming it in my head. It was coming out of dream-me’s mouth.
But it must have been coming out of my mouth as well, too trapped in my own head to know.
Because the next thing I knew, hands were grabbing me for real.
I didn’t recognize them for what they were at first, though.
All I knew was that hands were on me and that I didn’t want anymore of the torment I was experiencing.
So I writhed, lashed out, hit, yelled.
“Hey, hey. It’s okay,” a voice called, thick and unrecognizable while still half inside my dream state. “Abigail, it’s me,” he continued. “It’s Cary, love. You’re dreaming. Nothing is happening to you,” he cooed, pulling me closer, pinning my arms between our bodies as he crushed me to his strong chest.
The warmth was what broke through first.
The warm feel of bare skin against the side of my face.
The scent was next. Like the body wash in the shower. The same body wash in the shower that I sniffed when I was in there, that I barely managed to resist using just so I could have that scent with me all day.
The body wash.
In the shower.
At the hotel.
That I was sharing with Cary.
Because I was free.
Because Raúl hadn’t found me.
Even as I seemed to start to wrap my head around the fact that it was okay, that I was safe, a sort of hysterical cry caught in my throat.
“Shh, it’s okay,” Cary murmured as his one arm held me more tightly. The other moved up, stroking through the hair that was losing more and more dye each time I washed it, letting streaks of my strawberry blonde start to peek through. I knew the darker color was meant to keep me safe, but there was no denying I felt a sort of relief at seeing more of myself come through each time I looked in the mirror.