“Everyone please leave,” Stefano said calmly. He gestured toward Taviano. “Nicoletta, tell me what to do.”
“Get me a cool washcloth and some water.” She knelt beside her husband but didn’t touch him. “Baby. Can you hear my voice? Listen to me. To the sound of my voice. I’m right here with you. Taviano, it’s Nicoletta, and I’m right here.” She took the cloth from Stefano. “I’m going to just put this cloth on your head.”
She did so fearlessly, uncaring if he struck her. For a moment he caught at her wrist, fingers biting deep into her flesh, his gaze bouncing all over the place, but he didn’t hit her.
“That’s it, baby. Just take a breath. Breathe with me. Like we do when we’re together. At night, all those nights when you came to my room and I was panicking just like this. You put a cloth on my head, and you helped me to breathe. You said I was safe. You’re safe. No one can touch you. You’re here with me. I won’t ever let anyone touch you. You’re always safe with me, just the way I know I’m safe with you.”
Beside her, she felt Stefano freeze. Every muscle in his body. The room temperature seemed to go down several degrees. She didn’t take her eyes from Taviano, afraid to look away from him. Afraid of losing him to a nightmare world. She’d been lost in that world so many times and he had been the one to help her find her way out. She had to do the same for him.
“Baby, look at me. Don’t look inward. Just look at me. See me. Breathe with me. I’m real.” She took a chance and placed her hand gently on his shoulder, waited a heartbeat to see if he recognized her touch enough to let her slide her hand down to his. “I love you, Taviano. I know you’re somewhere else right now, but come back to me. That’s not a good place for you to be. Breathe with me.” She used the words he had sometimes used with her.
His long lashes fluttered. Those eyes of his, so intensely blue, so dark, looked at her, lost beyond imagining, haunted beyond description. Behind her, Stefano made a sound so agonized it tore at her heart. He saw what was in those eyes. The eyes of a lost child, a little boy so bewildered and tormented, so hopeless and hurt and completely alone.
Nicoletta didn’t realize she was weeping until she saw tears falling on Taviano’s shirt. She dashed at her face. “Come on, honey. Look at me. See me.”
The lashes fluttered again. Taviano looked confused. His breathing changed. He drew in one long, shuddering breath. Nicoletta immediately moved the washcloth over his face. “That’s right. You’re good. I’ve got you.”
He sat up and pulled her into him all in one motion, dragging her in so fast and hard he smashed her into his chest, driving all the air out of her lungs and just holding her. Her lungs burned, and for a few moments she thought she couldn’t breathe, but she managed to turn her head enough to find a way to draw in air, and that was all that mattered. They clung to each other.
“Dio, tesoro, what the hell happened?”
“It’s okay. You had a flashback. You’re okay. No one got hurt. You’re okay.” She kept murmuring reassurances over and over to him, remembering how disoriented she’d been at times when she’d found herself in his arms in the middle of the night in Lucia and Amo’s house, tight against his chest, sobbing.
“What the hell,” he muttered against her neck. “That hasn’t happened in years.”
He rocked her. Or she rocked him. She didn’t know which one of them needed more comfort at that point. Taviano had always been her rock, her anchor, and it had really thrown her that he had unexpectedly and without warning gone into a flashback. She knew that when he fully realized the event had happened in front of his siblings and cousins he was going to be very upset, but the worst was still waiting for them, sitting directly behind them on the floor.
She still hadn’t looked at Stefano. Other than that one agonized sound, much like a wounded animal, the head of the Ferraro family hadn’t so much as stirred.
It was some time before Taviano loosened his grip on Nicoletta and looked around him. “I don’t even know what triggered that, it hasn’t happened to me in years. One minute I was sitting there and the next, I couldn’t breathe. I felt like I was having a heart attack.”
“You scared everyone,” Nicoletta said.
“Everyone?” he echoed. Then it hit him where they were and that they’d been in a meeting with his siblings and cousins.
He gripped her arms hard and looked around the room. She knew the exact moment when he saw Stefano sitting on the floor just a few feet from them. Taviano went very still. She turned to face the oldest Ferraro brother as well. Stefano looked as destroyed as she felt. He had his head down, his fingers pressed into the corners of his eyes. Before either of them could speak, Stefano came to his feet in a swift, graceful movement. He reached down and offered Nicoletta his hand without really looking at her face.