Page 82 of To Save Him

A car door closed outside.

Well, that might not besostrange.  It could be someone delivering a package or visiting me (thatwould be strange).  But something told me to stop what I was doing right now—and just as the hairs stood straight on my arm, I could hear the outer screen door to the house opening.  It was downstairs, yes, but my big house was empty and quiet and my ears were attuned, allowing me to hear it.

And I was in Gabriel’s old room, snooping through my guest—mylover’sthings.  And I was about to be caught.

I shoved the papers back in the backpack and then crammed everything else back on top, in as close to the correct order as I could remember it being.  Then I zipped it up and put it back on the floor of the closet, shutting the door and then darting to the bedroom doorway just as I heard the front door open downstairs.  I closed the bedroom door and then walked into the bathroom, grabbing a rag under the sink so I could pretend I’d been cleaning.

Better flip on the light switch then.

It wasn’t too dirty in there, and I was at first thinking that was thanks to Annabel, because I didn’t think JR cared much.  Then I figured Brandon might have something to do with it, too, but he didn’t use this bathroom as much as he had at first.  Now he used mine.

My ears were straining to hear who had come in the door.  After I heard it close, Brandon’s voice traveled through the house.  “Kimberly, are you here?”

I hoped my face wouldn’t give me away.  As much as part of me wanted to ask him who the hell he really was, the rest of me thought that might be dangerous.  I didn’t know what he had to gain by pretending to be someone else with me.  Maybe if I knew the real him…but how would I find out?  For now, I knew I had to keep pretending like nothing had happened and nothing had changed.  “Yes.  I’m up here cleaning the bathroom.” Isoundednormal, right?

I felt like a rabbit frozen in the blinding gaze of a car’s headlights, trying to decide what the Kimberly of earlier today might have done, the one who’d been worried but hadn’t seen the discharge papers—if she’d actually been cleaning the bathroom upstairs.  Would she have dropped everything to greet Brandon or would she invite him to join her?  It dawned on me then, as I struggled with figuring out a proper reaction, that something was likelywrongwith Brandon—otherwise, why would he be home so early?  That made it easy to react without thought.  I tossed the rag in the dirty clothes hamper and made my way down the hall toward the stairway.  I saw Brandon standing just below, halfway up the stairs, with a look a shock on his face.

“What’s going on?” I asked, hoping I sounded concerned rather than stressed out.

It looked like his breathing was shallow, like he couldn’t get the air down to the bottom of his lungs, and his face looked pale.  Hell, he appeared to be ready to faint.  Even though part of me was cautious—afraid even—of who he might actually be, I still felt the need to nurture this young man.  I reached out and touched his arm as he answered me.  “I’m not doing as well as I thought.  I had an…episodeat work and I had to leave.”

“An episode?”

“Yeah.”  He swallowed as I examined his features.  I was now viewing him in light of being a pretender, but he was a damned good actor.  If the PTSD problems were a put on, he was convincing nonetheless.  My skepticism melted away as he continued talking.  “It’s nothing new, really, but I don’t know what triggers it.  I think it has something to do with being startled.  I was helping a customer load some bathroom tile and drywall mud into the back of her SUV.  The next thing I remember is sitting in the stall in the men’s bathroom and my boss asking if I’m in there.  I think he was ready to fire me, but when I got my bearings, I told him about the PTSD, how it only flares up now and then and I don’t know what causes an episode but what’s worse is not even remembering.  If I can’t remember what’s happened, how can I avoid a trigger?”

I put a hand on his shoulder.  I knew I needed to be cautious, but a huge part of me still cared very much for this young man and I realized that everything he’d told me might have been true—on one level or another.  “That’s got to be difficult.”  By instinct, both he and I began walking down the stairs.

“My boss pulled up the footage on video surveillance.  We have a couple of cameras outside and, even though they’re grainy, you could see what happened.  I’d loaded the boxes of tile and had just grabbed one of the buckets of mud.  I turned to put it in the car, and the woman kind of moved closer—I think she was telling me to move the bucket to another place, but there’s no sound with the video, so I don’t know for sure.  But I just froze for a few seconds, and then I walked away, and you could see her on camera telling me to come back and finish.  She finally picked up the other bucket herself and put it in the back and, by the time she wheeled the cart away, she looked pretty upset.  You could see me walking toward the front of the store, pretty out of it.  I wasn’t responding to anything—not her voice, not traffic.  Just kind of in my own little world.  My manager said the woman came in the store to complain and he apologized and, afterwards, came to find me.  He was cool when I explained what happened, but he said what I was thinking—how can you prevent something from happening when you don’t know what’s caused it?”

I was thinking back to the shed incident, the time when I’d triggered him.  “Any ideas?”

He let out a slow breath.  “Seeing the video…I wonder if it has anything to do with proximity—you know, maybe getting too close when I’m not expecting it?”

“That makes sense.  I think that’s what happened before—with you and me.”  And I wondered why he and I ended up having sex while his episode with this woman wound up with him hiding in a place that might have seemed safe and secluded.  As I thought that through, I said it out loud before coming to any conclusions.

By the time we reached the bottom of the stairs, I could see it on his face.  “Yeah…from being triggered to finding safety. Youfeel safe to me.  You always have.  There wasn’t anything at work that felt like you…so I guess I found something that felt like shelter.”

And with talk like that, how would I ever be able to separate myself enough to keep myself safe?  Thus was my predicament.

 

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