Unbroken (The Protectors 12)

So Magnus had suspected what Aleks was suffering from and had tried to tell the young man in a roundabout way…

It took Aleks a moment to figure things out. His mouth pulled into a frown. “I don’t have that,” he repeated. “You’re wrong. I’ve… I’ve been doing normal things since I left Father’s house.”

“Yes, you have, and you’ve done an incredible job. But PTSD isn’t something you can just will away, Aleks. Talking to someone will help you figure out what your triggers are and how to cope—”

“No!” Aleks shouted, then seemed to remember shouting wasn’t something he was allowed to do. “No,” he repeated as his agitation grew. “I’m fine. I’m okay… Dante… he’s proud of me because I’m doing so good…”

I fell silent as he pretty much answered all of my questions with that one statement.

He doesn’t want to disappoint his brother.

It made me wonder how much he was still hiding from Dante. And if he was pushing himself too hard in an effort to make his brother proud.

So his brother wouldn’t regret coming to get him.

“Can we please just go, Vaughn?” Aleks asked as he turned away from me and stared out the window.

“Aleks—”

“Please,” he repeated, his voice sounding hoarse.

I sighed and reached out to graze his cheek with my fingers, but he seemed to be expecting the move and pulled away.

So we were back where we’d started before we’d stopped for breakfast.

Fuck.

Chapter 8

Aleks

I’m sorry, Miss Penny.

Aleks, if you’d only been good they wouldn’t have hurt me…

I jerked awake at the sound of Miss Penny’s voice. She hadn’t spoken after Brian had left the room. I’d apologized dozens of times, but she’d never once spoken. I’d known why, of course, but my mind had tried to convince me she’d just been sleeping. Even when the man who’d worked for Brian had come to take her away, I’d kept right on reading. When Brian had come to get me later that morning, he’d led me to his bedroom, washed me off in his big bathtub and then had tucked me into his bed and told me how much he would have missed me if Miss Penny had tried to take me away from him. When his touch had stopped being about comfort, I’d silently begun repeating the names of the flowers and their meanings from Miss Penny’s book and within seconds I’d slipped away to my safe place on the beach with my family. After a long day spent building that epic sand castle, I’d fallen asleep on the sand and when I’d awoken, I’d been alone in Brian’s bed.

And Miss Penny had still been gone.

As the present returned full-force, I tried to catch my breath and immediately reached across the console to look for Vaughn’s hand. But it wasn’t there.

Because we weren’t in the car anymore.

There was no console, but Vaughn was next to me. Only, we were in bed.

Together.

Again.

Like the night before.

This time, though, Vaughn was asleep. Whereas I’d been lying flat and under the covers, Vaughn was sitting up, his back against the headboard. His hands were folded in his lap. On the nightstand was a gun sitting on top of a laptop computer.

Had I blacked out? Was Vaughn actually right about all that?

I shook my head.

No, I was okay… I was on my way back to being normal. Well, normal enough.

Dante was so proud of how well I was doing. I could see it in his eyes every time I did something like leave for work or make a decision about something.

Vaughn was wrong.

He just had to be.

I struggled to remember the events of the day. It took a moment but things finally became clearer as my breathing evened out. I’d stopped talking to Vaughn after he’d said those things to me. I wasn’t sure how many hours we’d driven for after that, but when he’d asked me what I wanted to eat for lunch, then eventually dinner, I’d politely told him I wasn’t hungry.

Fortunately, he hadn’t tried to make me eat because I wasn’t sure I would have been able to survive the humiliation of throwing up in front of the man twice in twenty-four hours.

It had once again been dark when he’d pulled off the interstate. I’d had no idea where we were and I’d been too tired to care. I’d only heard Vaughn briefly say the house belonged to a friend of his and that we were safe there as he’d shown me to the bedroom. I’d made use of the bathroom and then I’d crawled into the bed and couldn’t remember anything after that.

But luckily only because I’d been asleep.

Not because I’d blacked out.

Because I was normal… I didn’t have that thing Vaughn said I did.

He was wrong.

He just was.

I glanced at him, then the clock on the nightstand. It was just after three in the morning. There was a small lamp on the nightstand that was turned on, but it didn’t offer much light. I could see that the room we were in seemed a little more modern than the room we’d spent the previous night in, but it didn’t look particularly fancy. There was what looked like an old-fashioned fan on the dresser that was turned on and made a soft whirring sound that broke up the silence of the room.