The Baby Gamble (Texas Hold'em)

“One of the major symptoms of PTSD is reliving traumatic events. We all have memories and are sometimes attacked by them, but in Blake’s case, he relives the bad event in real time. Experiencing every nuance of it exactly as if it’s happening again.”

“He kept calling for Annie.”

“I’m guessing he did that a lot while he was gone. Probably anytime things got to be too much for him.”

“So he just goes through life spacing out periodically? Thrashing about without knowing what he’s doing?” Annie stood beside Becky’s chair, angry as hell, as if her friend could do something about all of this.

“No.” Becky’s voice was calm in a way she didn’t usually speak to Annie. Calm, as if she was dealing with a patient. “Something must have triggered it,” she said. “And I’m guessing, if you could get Blake to talk to you about it, he’d be able to tell you exactly what it was. PTSD is largely manageable, if certain conditions are met.”

Now that’s what Annie needed to hear. Her heart was breaking for this man. For what he’d suffered. And continued to suffer. Blake was a good man. The best. He didn’t deserve any of this. “What conditions?”

“Early intervention helps tremendously,” Becky said. “If Blake sought help when he was released, he’s probably got this under control most of the time. And based on the fact that he and Cole are close friends and Cole knew nothing about it, and also based on the fact that he runs a successful business, I’d say that was probably the case.”

“You think he’s in counseling?”

“He’d pretty much have to be. He also might be on medication.”

“For what?”

“Anxiety. Depression. Those are the most common side effects. Maybe some kind of sleep aid.”

“Sleep aid? He didn’t have a whit of trouble falling asleep,” Cole interjected. His face was still unnaturally pale. His mouth was pinched, as if he was feeling sick.

“For someone with PTSD there are usually three areas of trouble. The first, you saw tonight. The second is called avoidance. It’s the need to keep yourself from anything that might trigger a memory—an episode like you just saw. It also often creates a kind of void, an emotional numbness, in the victim.”

So much was starting to make sense.

“And the third?” Annie asked.

“It encompasses several things, the most common of which is insomnia or some other form of sleep disorder.”

Could that be why Blake had left her bed each night after making love? Not to abandon her, and not because he didn’t want to stay, but because he was afraid to? Because he knew he might not be able to control what happened if he fell asleep?

Her eyes filling with tears, Annie thought about what she’d seen tonight. She hated what she was hearing.

And loved Blake Smith with all her heart. His pain was hers. His suffering was hers.

And his challenges would be hers, too. Whether he agreed to share his life with her or not.

She was irrevocably in love with him. When he suffered, so would she.

And as she dozed in the lounger in Cole’s living room that night, staying right next to Blake, needing to be close to him, she understood two very important things.

She knew why June Lawry had said she’d have married Tim all over again, if she’d been given the chance. And Annie knew, too, that she had to forgive her father for taking his own life.

Just as she absolutely could not—and did not—blame Blake for reliving a traumatic event, she couldn’t blame her father for having an imbalance that made his pain unendurable.

Both men needed to be loved. Cherished. Not condemned.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE LAST THING BLAKE expected to see when he woke up in the early hours of Saturday morning was Annie, sleeping in the chair beside him. His last rational recollection was of Cole sitting there.

The television was off, the house quiet. His buddy must have gone up to bed.And Becky? Had she been there? Or had he dreamed that part?

He’d had an episode. He knew that. Recognized the feeling of emptiness that always came after one of them. The feeling that he’d passed out and lost part of his life. He’d only had a few full-out attacks, but all it took was one to know what had happened.

He’d pushed himself too hard. Was too impatient. And stupid, too, to try to prove to himself that there was nothing wrong with him.