Page 199 of Perfect
I guess not.
I know I’m safe because I’m with Theo and we’re at home, so I close my eyes and drift down into myself. The only thing that permeates is Theo’s warm scent, which calms me down.
I don’t know how long it takes, but I slowly become aware that I’m wrapped up in a large blanket on our bed, Theo’s arms around me and his soothing, low voice speaking softly. I can feel his lips moving in my hair and one of his hands stroking my back gently as his words finally come into focus.
“...be okay, honey. It’s not going to last forever, I fucking promise. We’ll figure it out, okay? Everything will go back to -” I lean into him slightly, and he stops talking as one of his hands raises to cup my cheek and turn my face up towards him. His brows are knit together in concern, and his eyes search my face.
“What do you need? Can I draw you a bath? Would that help?” I nod, and he leans down to kiss my forehead. “I’ll be right back.” I watch him slide off the bed, his posture rigid as he walks down the hall to the bathroom. I blink, looking around the room for the clock, realizing it’s roughly two hours after we got home.
I curl up into a ball on the bed, holding my knees close to me, letting waves of despair crash over me. Theo comes back into the room and gently pulls me into his arms, carrying me into the bathroom and setting me in the bathtub as the warm water pours into it.
“Do you want tea?” I nod, and he tries to smile at me.
I lay in the large bathtub, turning the cold tap down until the water is scalding, staring out the window, thinking. Theo comes back up a few minutes later with two mugs of tea, placing one on the bathtub tray before he sits down next to the tub, staring at me intently.
“You want to talk about it?” I turn the water off and shrug, curling into a small ball and resting my arms on my knees. “Are you okay?” I look up at the ceiling, shaking my head a little.
“It’s not fair,” I say quietly. “He’s still taking things from me.” I look over at Theo, his jaw clenched and his face blank as he tries not to freak out. “I’m sorry I pushed it, but I just wanted everything to be normal again. I didn’t think it would be…I mean, it’syou. I feel so fucking safe with you.” He smiles at me a little. “Everything is hard, butthiswasn’t supposed to be hard. I don’t even know if you’ll be here after next week, and I can’t connect with you the way I want, and I just…fuck,” I sob, and Theo rubs my back.
“Everything’s going to be okay.”
“You can’t lie to me,” I choke out, and he pulls my face into his hands, kissing my forehead.
“Sweetheart, I’m not,” he whispers, his voice pained. “I fuckingpromise.”
***
Theo spends the rest of the day trying hard to take care of me. He doesn’t let me out of sight and barely lets me out of his arms. I pretend I’m fine, but it’s impossible to hide how devastated I am, and I can tell it’s making him more and more stressed. He can’t figure out how to take care of me, and I can’t figure out how to get him to calm down.
Once it’s time for bed, he holds me tightly and curls around me protectively, and I feel so safe that I fall asleep easily for the first time since my birthday. I wake up in the middle of the night from a nightmare and reach out for Theo, only to find that the bed is empty, and I panic. I flip on the lamp on the nightstand and see a quickly scrawled note that just saysbasement, and the panic ebbs.
I find him running with his headphones on, and I sit on the stairs and watch him for a while, noticing that he lost more weight in jail than I realized. When he finally gets off thetreadmill, he lays on the ground, breathing hard. He covers his face with his left arm and starts flexing and gripping his right hand, which doesn’t have a full range of motion anymore.
I watch him for a minute before I go down and sit next to him, gently taking his right hand in mine. He startles a little and pulls his headphones off, and I can tell from his eyes that he’s been crying. I start massaging his hand, being mindful not to pull too hard on the skin of the large, deep pink scar that spans his palm. He sighs, closing his eyes for a second.
“Why are you up, sweetheart?” I dig my fingers against the base of his thumb, and he groans appreciatively.
“I had a nightmare.” He shoots me a pained look. “What about you?”
“Me, too.” I lace my fingers through his and stretch his hand gently. We stay there for a minute, Theo looking up at me with concern as I focus on easing the tension in his hand.
“What happens in yours?” I ask, and he closes his eyes, squeezing our interlaced fingers.
“You die,” he whispers. “If it’s a good dream, I get you to the hospital first.” I ignore the tears pricking in the corners of my eyes as I push his damp hair back from his forehead, staring at the puckered, deep pink scar beneath his left collarbone before I graze my fingers over it gently.
“Can you come back to bed?” He nods and stands up, keeping his hand in mine as he follows me upstairs. He takes a quick shower before curling up in bed with me. He winds his fingers through mine, placing our hands on my chest and stomach, and we lay there for a long time, synching our breath and helping each other relax.
“I promise we’re going to get through this,” he whispers into my hair as I drift off.
Lying there, half asleep and at home in his arms, I almost believe him.
***
After that first day, we try to act normal, but nothing is normal. We don’t talk about what happened, and we don’t talk about what might happen, we just try to be present with each other.
I’m able to get real sleep, but Theo can’t. The second day we’re home, I wake up at three in the morning to him shaking me awake, begging me to wake up as he shoves his fingers into my neck. After that, he barely sleeps at all, and he spends most of the time I’m asleep preparing for if he has to go back to prison.
He won’t talk with me about it because that makes going back feel like a real possibility, but he makes me sign a lot of paperwork, tells me I should get my bank cards to his accounts within a week, and has the most expensive, aggressive security system he can buy installed.
