Page 54 of Bound By Threads
I’ve spent so long surviving, I don’t know how to do anything else. I tell him as much. “I feel like if I let go of this… of all of it. I’ll disappear,” I whisper. “I don’t even know who I am without the pain.”
“You’re Lottie. You’re our girl,” he says without hesitation. “You’re brave, and stubborn, and you laugh when you’re tired and cry when you think I’m not looking. It tears my fucking heart out when I hear those gasping breaths you take to try stay silent. You steal my hoodies when I’m not home, and I love that they smell like you when I get back. You think sharks are the most misunderstood animal in the ocean. You carry the weight of a thousand storms and still get up every day. You inspire me.That’swho you are. You don’t need to be anyone else.”
I’m crying now, fully sobbing into his shoulder, because I’ve never wanted to believe something so badly.
But I’m still afraid.
Afraid that the memories are going to drown me.
Afraid that he’ll find me.
Afraid that Roman, Crew, and Elijah are going to pull my secrets from me, and that Archer will find out about my stripping.
Or that I’m in love with his best friend, too.
And I’m afraid that if I finally let it all go, it still won’t be enough to make it stop hurting.
Chapter28
Archer
It’s been three days since Lottie’s last therapy session, and every hour since then, I’ve watched the color drain from her eyes like someone cracked her open and let everything good spill out. I watched her sit in front of me, tears burning down her cheeks, and I’ve been spiraling ever since.
The thing about war is that you learn to watch people. You learn their movements, the slightest twitch that can give them away.
You learn what their silence means.
I know Lottie’s silences like I know the scars on my palms.
This isn’t the silence of her healing—it’s the silence of her bleeding out. She’s been moving like a ghost. Barely eating, barely speaking, like she’s not even here.
I know that look.
I saw it every day overseas—in the mirror, in the faces of the men I call brothers. I saw it in Luke’s eyes the night I dropped him home… the night I saved Lottie from the waves and lost him to a rope around his neck.
The vacant, glassy-eyed distance.
I could have saved him.
I should have stayed, but then I would have never saved her.
I saved her, but she had that same look in her eyes, and it scares the shit out of me.
It’s why I left the Marines. Not because I couldn’t handle it—hell, that was easy compared to this. The thought of being halfway across the world while she slipped beneath the surface again, silent and unreachable, clawed at me until I couldn’t breathe.
And now? I’m suffocating all over again because she hasn’t come home. Hasn’t answered the phone.
Mom said she had pole fitness, but she should have been done by now. I’m pacing in front of the door like a madman, but I can’t help it.
She won’t talk to me, not about the session or about what triggered her so badly. I’m trying to be patient, but I can only be patient for so long when it comes to her.
What if they cornered her again?
I can feel the shadows creeping back in. I see the way she’s locking herself in the bathroom, the shower running too long, and her eyes a little too red when she emerges. In the way her hands shake when she thinks I’m not looking.
It’s driving me mad that I can’t fix it.
By 11 p.m., I’ve called everyone I can think of. Emma texts me back to let me know that Lottie has canceled her next session.
