Harper woke with a jolt, her heart in her mouth. The first thing she was aware of was shouting. The room was dark except for glimmers of moonlight through the blinds, which was enough to show unfamiliar surroundings, and the man beside her.
Nick.
His shouting eased to incoherent mumbling. Despite still being deeply asleep, his head moved with jerky rhythms and his hands seemed to punctuate his words.
Should she wake him? This was no happy dream—he was far too agitated for that to be possible—but wasn’t there a rule about not waking someone from a nightmare? Or was that sleepwalking? She bit down on her bottom lip, wishing she’d paid more attention to wherever she’d heard the advice.
“No,” he barked, eyes still closed as his hand sliced through the air. His wedding ring glinted in the moonlight, and it struck her anew that the man in her bed was her husband.
Husband.
They were married, and she knew less about him than about many of her coworkers. A wave of panic washed over her. She didn’t really know this man, and she certainly didn’t know how to help him now.
He shouted again, louder this time, then he screamed. It was a raw, guttural sound, full of pain and anguish, like nothing she’d ever heard before, and it sent cold prickles racing across her skin. She had to act.
Not wanting to wake him suddenly, she began to talk softly, soothingly, gradually raising her volume. The way his face contorted into expressions of utter despair broke her heart. In that moment, she wanted nothing more than to wrap him in her arms and take his pain away, but all she could do was keep up the litany of soothing words. Slowly, steadily, she talked him around. His screams died to tearless sobs, and she raised her voice again, to just above normal speaking volume. He drew in a deep, shaky breath, and as he released it, his eyes opened.
For a millisecond, the pain she’d witnessed was reflected in their depths until his eyes focused on her. She saw the moment he realized what had happened—just before the shutters came down. Hard.
He jumped out of bed and stood on the rug, skin covered in a sheen of perspiration, muscles clenched, his pose rigid, every inch of him proclaiming his military past. Despite being naked now, he’d been more exposed when he’d been asleep and covered by the sheet.
“Harper, I’m sorry,” he said, his voice rough yet controlled.
“It was a nightmare.” Smiling, she shook her head, wanting him to know everything was okay. “You have nothing—”
Expression flat, he cut her off. “You shouldn’t have had to experience that.”
Her heart broke a little for him then. He shouldn’t have had to experience that, either. “It’s okay, Nick, really—”
“I’ll take a guest room.” Without making eye contact, he reached for his phone and wristwatch from the bedside table, turned and walked through the door.
Stunned, she watched him go.
He was leaving her.
As he disappeared into the dark hallway, she had trouble filling her lungs. He might be virtually a stranger, but he was her husband, the man she’d made love with only hours ago. And now he was leaving the bed where they’d shared that passion.
A small, hard knot of panic sitting in the middle of her chest grew, enveloped her and bestowed the familiar taste of abandonment.
She tried logic, always her first line of defense—he’d left because he was still upset about the nightmare, not because of her. But it didn’t ease the sour taste at the back of her mouth. She’d offered to be there for him while he dealt with the nightmare, so, yeah, he’d walked out on her.
Logic rarely worked when she was dealing with the slap of rejection, and she usually moved right on to the second line of defense—comfort eating. But she w
asn’t in her own home, and having to riffle through his kitchen cupboards for carbs and sugar would probably cancel out any comfort effects. Besides, she was trying to eat healthy for the babies.
So that left her with two options—curl up in a ball and let the emotion overwhelm her, or...
Or find Nick and get him to talk his nightmare through, both for his sake and so she could let go of the image of him walking out the door the way so many people in her life had done before him.
She stood and rubbed her hands over her face. This night had shown her one thing—she’d been right to think that sleeping together would make their relationship messy. They already had so many challenges in making their arrangement work, making love had been foolhardy. They’d risked their tentative cohesion merely for physical desires.
They couldn’t afford to take the risk again.
But she couldn’t dwell on that right now. First, she needed to deal with the fallout of this time and make sure Nick was okay.
* * *
Nick flicked the light on in the guest bedroom’s bathroom and headed for the shower, trying to forget the look of horror on Harper’s face. A look that had the power to haunt him forever.