Rock Star (Dream Weaver #2) (6 page)

             
I gave his arm a playful pinch. “That’s not what I mean.”

             
Nick chuckled. “How far back did you want to go?”

             
I counted the months backwards. Nick entered my life in December, after the assault. Unless you counted the previous time he chased away the night terrors, after the crash in April. It was now March, nearly a year since...So nearly a year that Nick had been involved in my life to one extent or another. I’d first been captured by his dark gaze across the tumbling waters down at Dead Man’s Creek.

             
“Well, the beginning, I guess.”

             
“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the ow!” Another less playful pinch. I glared up at him for his obvious evasions. I’d experienced this before, when he didn’t want to tell me the truth. Typical, textbook evasion techniques. Despite the return of all my memories, they’d all come back in a supernova of images, sounds and emotions, and I was still sorting through them. Still filtering through the mire. “The beginning, like, when you started coming around here. Did you orchestrate our meeting at the creek?”

             
Nick fidgeted beside me but his expression remained cool. “No. I did not orchestrate our meeting at the creek. I was out exploring. I’d been wandering for over an hour through the woods between our place and the tunnel. You’ve never explored through there have you?”

             
“No. I always thought that stretch was private property so I never went beyond the ravine below the tracks. Ha. Which is still probably private property,” I mused out loud. “And when did you start coming around the cottage?”

             
This time, his squirming made its way to his face. He didn’t want me to know the truth. “That night.”

             
“Seriously?” Opposing reactions divided my thoughts; part impressed by his need to see me again, and part fearful of his need to see me again. It felt a little stalkerish.

             
Nick’s gaze skittered away from mine, and fell on Eddyson’s twitching paws. He reached out a hand to quiet the bird chase dream bounding through the pups hound-dog brain. “Um, yeah.”

             
I remembered, more than once, feeling so loquacious around Nick—not—and it made me smile that the tables were now turned. “Why?”

             
“Why what?” he stalled.

             
Frustration rumbled in my throat. “Why are you dodging my questions? Why can’t you just answer me?”

             
Clouds of remorse darkened his face. “I just…it’s just that, when you say it out loud, it sounds like I’m a stalker.”

             
“Well. Aren’t you?” I let my mouth curl into a mocking smirk.

             
Nick ran his thumbnail down the seam of my jeans. “Yeah. A little. I guess.” His face filled with worry and he turned the force of his eyes on me. “But I would never hurt you, Em.” He clutched hand and I winced as he crushed it in his. “You know that, right? You know I would never hurt you?” Something beyond this conversation was troubling the usual cool calmness that exuded from him, but I had to deal with one thing at a time.

             
“Of course. I mean, I guess. You haven’t done anything to suggest you might.”
Except cut a guy’s head off right here in my living room.

             
“I would never. I swear to you, Emari. I would never hurt you.” Nick’s desperation stirred something on the inside of me.
But he had hurt me. He hurt me when he left me.

             
“You haven’t answered the question, though. Why did you follow me home?”

             
Tiny tremors shook his fingers as he reached for my face…

              Coarse fingers scorch a trail down the soft skin of my arm. Arms, a vice around my own; arms full of rage and violence. My world is pain. I am crushed. Beaten. Cruel words that my brain refuses to translate as human, grate through me like a ragged wind. Breath, putrid with the stench of alcohol and cigarettes, curls into my nostrils. A cruel, unwanted kiss.

              Like an electrical arc, the tremble from Nick’s fingers shuddered through my body. “Don’t.” I swatted his hand away and launched away from him. A cavern of sadness pitched his eyes black.

             
“Em?”

             
My chest filled with cement and my lungs were lined with sandpaper. I heard Nick’s voice, but…
rancid breath, crushing hands, hell blackness, and the smell of dust bunnies
…crushed in on me, sudden and destructive, like a Texas storm. Panic stole my breath and I skittered away.
Cold cement. Savage fists. Molten copper on my tongue.
It all hijacked my senses with destructive force.

             
“Emari?”

             
No!
Phantom pain split my skull; my muscles convulsed, prepared for cruelty.
Please!
My heart slammed with the force of a heart attack. Instinct blazed like wildfire through my veins.
His
face. Pain. Darkness.
My welcomed friend.
Ruby tears stained my face. Flesh swelled and split. Fear throbbed in my wounds.
Just let me die.
Light. I closed my eyes to the hell in his, gagged at the onslaught of his saloon breath—cheap beer and cigarettes. Bile warred in my gut and I fought to keep it down. The undertow of darkness drowned me.

             
“Emari?”

             
Nick’s hands, warm and tender, clasped my arms, but all I saw was
him;
all I felt was
the phantasm of the pain
he’d
inflicted. My fingers curled into claws and I reached to scratch out his eyes; to escape the terror that bound me. Nick blocked my attack and gently, carefully grabbed my wrist and crushed me to his chest.

             
“No! Let me go!” I screeched and struggled like a feral harpy.

             
“Emi…” he breathed. “Hush, baby. I got you.”               Reason and reality filtered into my mind with Nick’s soft words, and spread like whiskey fire through my body. “I’m here, honey,” Nick whispered and bent to look into my eyes. “Emi? Look at me. Everything’s okay.” His warmth snared my panicked panting, reined it in. My breaths slowed with the dawning of realization of where I truly was; whose arms truly held me.

             
“I’m here, honey,” Nick echoed.

             
“Why?” I whimpered.

             
“It doesn’t matter. I’m here and I’ve got you. Everything’s going to be okay.” His words penetrated the chaos inside me.

             
“Nick?”

             
“Yes, baby?”

             
Grief exploded in my chest, choked off my breath, and jolted my body. His face brimmed with compassion.

             
“Help…”

             
His arms engulfed me like the sea; his presence surrounded my soul and drew me down into a soothing, rolling drift that lulled my inner turmoil. I rode out the storm in Nick’s encapsulating arms. They were my anchor to reality. His words, a beacon through the miasma of memories.

*          *          *

              “What was that?” I asked once my world dulled to quiet roar.

             
“I think it was what they call PTSD,” he said as his fingers traced my jaw line.

             
“Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?”

             
“I think so.”

             
We laid still and quiet in the comfort of my bed. “It was like it was all happening all over again,” I said into the folds of his shirt clutched in my fist. “I could feel it, smell it, taste it—all of it.” Nick was silent, uncertain as I battled the memories that struck me so fresh like it happened only moments ago.

             
“I don’t understand what triggered that, though,” Nick puzzled.

             
After a contemplating silence, I spoke with reluctance. “Your hand. Something happened when you raised your hand to my face. Your fingers were shaking. It was like an electrical charge in my brain that lit up that specific memory in living color.”

             
Nick slid out the bed and crossed the room. I knew he’d be afraid to touch me now. That dark something inside him that meted out fear, seized him.

             
“I hate to sound cliché, but it’s not you, it’s me,” I said.

             
Nick grunted disapproval and stared out the back windows into the cold dark night and I felt his heart shutting down to me. Again, I battled with two sides within myself.
He may as well leave. Everyone else did.
But the thought of him walking out the door wrenched my heart so viciously, I feared I wouldn’t survive. My heart ached to go to him, to beg for his love. But greater fears kept me planted on the bed.

             
“I should go,” he said finally, the words low and forced.

             
“Nick. Please.” Begging was apparently not beneath me.

             
“I’ll come back. If…when you need me.”

             
I followed like a little lost lamb to the door. So. He was leaving. “First—tell me the answer. Why did you come here that first time?”

             
He stood silent and dark, still as the frosted trees that surrounded my little cottage in the woods. But I could see the turbulence that whirled within him. Light fell onto the porch as he slid the door open. “I don’t know,” he said. “I wish I never had.”

             
Rocked by the confession, I froze in stunned silence. His words impaled my heart and exhumed it from my chest. The air sucked out of my lungs, my own words robbed of breath. I couldn’t even beg him to stay.

Chapter 8 Safe & Sound

              I awoke wrapped in the blanket of Nick’s arms and the flood of emotions washed over me. I lunged away from him as the stab of his words returned.

             
“Emari? What’s wrong?” Nick sat up and scanned my face.

             
“You left.” I pushed farther away from him and gathered my pillow to my chest to shield my heart.

             
“No, honey, I’ve been right here. I didn’t go anywhere,” he protested.

             
“No. You said—you said you wished you’d never come here in the first place and then you left.”

             
Nick grimaced. “Emari, I never said that. I didn’t leave.”

             
I spun off the bed and slammed the pillow down on the covers. Blood and chaos hemorrhaged in my brain. I remembered. I asked him why he’d come here, to my house, that day after meeting him at the creek. He said he didn’t know, that he wished he never had. Didn’t he?

             
Nick followed but kept a protective distance. My head throbbed as I prowled the room. My hurt hardened to anger. “Why are you lying to me? Why can’t you just tell me the truth?” That
something
that haunted him materialized in his eyes.

             
He reached for me but I dodged away. His hands fell to his sides.

             
“Emari, I’ve been here all night. I swear. I even told Sabre to shove it when he called me to come home,” he said. A note of desperation eked into his voice.

             
“I know what I remember, Nick. I know what you said, what you did. You left me. Again. Why are you here, now? Why did you come back if you wished you’d never come in the first place?”

             
“I swear to you,” he said emphatically. “I never said those things to you. I never left.”

             
I paced the room trying to decide if I should calm the beast within, or set her loose to rip him to shreds. What was going on? Did he say those things to me or not? And if he didn’t, where did it come from? Was this more mind games from a Wraith lurking nearby? Finally, Nick found his courage and came to me, placed his hands on my shoulders. I shrugged him off and walked away.

             
“Emari, something isn’t right here and I think you know it. Could I…Would you let me see what happened?”

             
The thought of his touch abhorred me, but every cell in my body craved it. My heart wrenched in hope. And fear of being beaten again. Like an addict in withdrawal, despising the drug but wanting it nonetheless. He sat on the bed and patted the covers, inviting me to join him. I stared at the floor at the bedside, remembering that night that seemed forever ago; the night I finally roused myself from sleep to find this beautiful stranger in my home. The night I’d tased him, and his inhuman body writhed with the charge of millions of volts of electricity. I thought I’d killed him. And it broke my heart. I shuffled to the bed and hesitantly sat beside him.

             
“I don’t wanna do this anymore,” I choked out through the tangle in my throat, and fell against him. The sparks of grief quieted with his touch. His chest rose and fell with a sigh of relief.

             
“Don’t want to do what, honey?” His voice hummed inside me, and charmed my heart.

             
“I don’t want to be hurt anymore. I don’t want to be afraid anymore. I don’t want creepy wraith-guys fucking with my head. I just—I’m tired. I’m tired of fighting just to stay sane, tired of fighting to stay alive, fighting to breathe.”

             
His hand pressed, soft and warm, against my face, holding me to his chest, and safety. “Just breathe, baby. I got you.”

             
Only a whimper answered him. When was life going to return to normal? Did normal even exist for me anymore?

             
The tug of his presence wound through me and the soothing side effects lulled the turmoil. As he escaped the confines of my mind, the grief he’d kept at bay, flooded like seawater into my lungs. My chest heaved for air.

             
“Hush, honey. Everything’s okay. It was just a bad dream. That happens sometimes with burgeoning Caphar. It’s one of the few tells. Dreams seem so real it’s hard to tell the difference between dream and reality. But I promise you, no one is messing with your head, not even me,” he explained patiently.

             
I shook my head against his chest. “I don’t know where the conversation ended and the dream began.”
How do I trust you?
“Swear to me. Swear it was all just a dream.”

             
“I swear to you, Emari, it was all just a dream,” he proclaimed.

             
My heart clutched at this life line, but the storm still raged inside me. The seed of distrust remained. As much as I wanted to believe him, that tiny inkling rooted itself. What did I truly know of Nickolas Benedetti? He’d come to me. Supposedly, after meeting me in the woods. He had prowled outside my home, kept tabs on me. For all intents, he broke into my home; he messed with my mind; caused me to forget things; manipulated my actions. Only because of my persistence did we finally meet face to face, and even then he was reluctant to share the truth with me. He’d brought with him an enemy that savaged my mind, my heart, and my home; exposed me to a violence I’d never before experienced. Then, he left. Took away every memory of himself, though their shadows still fell across my soul in his absence. Was this really a man I could trust? Did I want to trust him so desperately that my judgment was clouded? Was I so fearful of being alone that I’d allowed someone dangerous into my life? Was I truly in love with him, or just filling the emptiness left by my parents?

             
His eyes followed my every move as I wandered aimlessly about the house, and every few moments, I felt the brush of him in my mind, before he scurried away like a child sorely tempted by a candy dish but even more fearful of being caught.

             
“What are you doing?” I asked. “You keep reaching out and running away.”

             
“I just—wanted to know what you’re thinking. I’m trying to be respectful and not just take what I want.” He looked away and huffed a laugh. “That sounds very spoiled of me, doesn’t it?”

             
“A bit,” I conceded.

             
“Emari?”

             
“Hm?”

             
“What are you thinking about?”

             
I echoed his laugh.
Guess all you had to do was ask.
“You.” I picked up a Storyteller figure my parents brought me from San Diego and stroked the tiny heads of the children. “Trust.” I didn’t have to see his face to sense the panic that rolled off him in sonic waves. I wasn’t sure I wanted to have this conversation. It hadn’t turned out well in my dream. If it was a dream. “You reached to touch my face and your hand shook. Something about that tremble triggered the memories of—the rape. It was so real, it was like it was all happening again right that very moment. You told me it was PTSD. Is that what you think?”

             
“I don’t know, but it makes sense. Combat vets, rape survivors, something happens in their brains during a major trauma that affects how the memories are recorded. It’s not like a regular memory. The senses are heightened, the feelings intensified. The neurons and synapses in their brain fire more acutely. Your response was very common to people who suffer a traumatic event.”

             
“Well, thank you Dr. Nick.” My voice curdled more than I intended. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him flinch. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “I’m not really sure I understand why you followed me home that first day, but I don’t believe you meant to hurt me.”

             
Nick drifted cautiously to my side. “Honey, can I show you what I saw that day at Dead Man’s Creek? Show you how I responded to your voice, your eyes? To you?”

             
I nodded and his arms enfolded me. I hummed my relief, finally finding home and respite from the ravages of my internal war.

              A brittle branch snapped. A swish of cloth against brush. The quiet thud as I hit the ground, prey to the ages of pine needles on the path. I scrambled off my backside just in time to see Nick’s dark head snap around in my direction. He watched me fumble for hiding and bale on the idea.

             
“Hey,” he said, and grinned at me across the rushing water.

             
“Hey,” I said back. His gaze zoomed in on my eyes, emerald green, sparkling like a kiss of rain on the forest.

             
“Nice place,” he said.

             
A small, shy smile curled my lips.

             
Butterfly wings trembled in his breast. “Do you own this property? I mean, if I’m trespassing, I apologize. We just moved in downstream a ways and I was just wandering….”

             
I raised my hands to stop him. “No, no. It’s not mine. I think it belongs to the guy who owns most of the land around here,” I said gesturing around the bowl-like valley the creek meandered through. His eyes followed my gesture, but snapped back to my face. “He’s cool with people coming down here.” I grimaced at my own forthcoming, which only stretched his smile wider.

             
A long-unfelt warmth and passion rushed through him. He played it off with, “Oh, well. That’s cool.” A desire to stay, to talk with me more, tugged hard on his resolve, but he turned and started to walk away into the woods. Then, he paused and turned back to me with a dazzling, boyish grin. “Maybe I’ll see you down here sometime.”

             
“Yeah. Maybe.”

              With that, he turned and walked away. A smile split his face, and warmed the cold, dark place inside him. The decision was made. He had to know the girl that charmed him in a cool quiet forest with her cool quiet eyes.

              I finally allowed myself to fully melt into him.

             
Schizophrenia. Yes, that must be what I was suffering from; vacillating like a capricious child between trust and mistrust, utter devotion and stark fear. For now…trust and devotion.