Page 28 of Shield and Savior

I think I’ve done a pretty great job keeping it professional. After Champ goes to bed, I sit on the couch with Izzy. Sometimes we talk, and other times we play card games. She cheats as much as Alana does. But overall, it’s been great.

She says goodnight, and I watch her go into her room. Do I wish I could snuggle up next to her? Sure. And do I love that I’m the first one she sees in the morning? No, scratch that. I really like it. Yes. I like it a lot. Not love. That would be unprofessional.

Still, it’s getting harder to keep that emotional distance.

Around two-thirty in the morning, Champ comes out of his bedroom, wide-eyed and shivering. As soon as I hear him moving around, I know something’s wrong.

“Hey, Champ, what’s up?”

He rubs his eyes with the base of his hands. His pajama pants are halfway up his calf. Izzy bought him new ones when they moved, but maybe defaulting to his old ones is a comfort thing. Or he grabbed the first thing he saw and was too tired to change them.

But he seems small, contrary to how I’m used to seeing him over the last few weeks.

“Bad dream.” He hunches his shoulders in and wraps his arms around his chest.

Dreams are the fucking worst. Can’t do anything to escape them, can’t control them, you just gotta experience them, and, if you’re lucky, they vanish when you wake up. But I hate the lingering ones that claw at your subconscious while you wake, are like a cancer, spreading slowly into every thought you have. No, thank you.

When I was a kid, I used to dream about a clown and pool sharks. There was one recurring nightmare with a clown pool shark. But I would take those over the dreams that felt real. The ones like a memory in a constant loop, changing fractionally every time so over the years the memory of my father walking out became a twisted, gnarled knot of lies. Only the feelings stayed the same.

My knees crack bending down to Champ’s level. “Wanna talk about it?”

He shrugs, half-heartedly. “I guess.”

“Want me to wake your mom?” I’m not sure what the protocol is on this one. But he shakes his head. “It’s ok to be scared. Moms are the best for that.”

Champ hangs his head lower. “Not when your nightmares make your mom sad.”

Oh shit. This is a big one. “Okay, want a glass of water? We can sit and talk.”

He trudges toward the couch and wraps himself up in the throw blanket I used to keep my feet warm. By the time I’m back with his water, he’s cocooned in a yellow blanket of fluff. I put the glass on the coffee table and wait for him to talk.

The condensation on the glass starts to drip before he speaks. “It was a monster, all hands, no body. The monster chased us in a long hallway. It used its fingers to run, so it was fast. Mom was dragging me away, but her arm kept getting longer, and her body moved further away. I was slower, and the hand monster gained on me. I screamed, and Mom turned. It was weird because I could see her, and I could see how close the monster was to me. She snapped her arm back, and I went flying toward her. For a second, as she got closer I felt safe. But I brushed past her, further down the hallway than she was. The hand monster found her. I tried to run toward her, but the walls started to squeeze me, and I couldn’t get out. I couldn’t help her.”

It doesn’t take a psychology degree to decode that dream. “It must’ve been hard not feeling big enough to protect her.”

The little cocoon head nods. “I’m supposed to. It’s just her and me.”

And my heart shatters. Right there. Every repressed memory slams into my chest at once. I was the same kid, but I was alone. So I say the words I needed to hear when I was nine years old. “You don’t have to protect your mom from everything. It’s not only you two anymore. Your grandpa, Uncle Donnie, Uncle Joey, Nonna—you’ve got tons of people who love you.”

He’s staring off into space, and I can’t tell if he wasn’t paying attention at all, or if he absorbed everything. “Are you always going to be around?”

Oh shit.

“Well, my best friend Alana is good friends with Uncle Joey, and she sees Aunt Waverly at least once a month, so even after I’m off this detail, I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

Champ bundles himself even smaller in his little cocoon. “Oh.”

“I don’t want to lie to you, and I’m not going to talk to you like you’re a little kid because we both know you’re not.” I shift my weight and put my elbow on my knee, resting my head on my hand. “When I leave, it won’t be because you did anything wrong. It will be because you and your mom are safe.”

“You won’t leave because you’re mad at me?”

“Nope.”

His brown mop of hair moves. “Lance?”

“Yeah?”

“I spilled Slurpee in the back seat of the car a few days ago.”

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