Page 168 of Cherish

And then he does it again. And again. And again.

Is he sick?I wonder as I sit back up. But vampires don’t get sick, at least not like that. So I reach over and click on the bedside light—only to realize that Hudson is having a nightmare.

And not just any nightmare, judging by the way he’s jerking and trembling against me. He’s having the nightmare of all nightmares.

“Hudson?” I whisper, pressing a soft hand to his chest. “It’s okay, babe. You’re okay.”

He doesn’t answer, doesn’t indicate by so much as a flicker of his eyelids that he’s heard me. Instead, he just lays there, stiff and completely unbending as I rub my hand up and down his arm.

When he still doesn’t respond, I think he must have fallen asleep again. I wait for a few minutes, but when nothing else happens, I close my eyes as I sink down beside him—and then nearly go through the ceiling when he screams at the top of his lungs.

“Hudson!” I’m so startled that I’m yelling now, too. “Hudson, are you all right?”

But he’s still asleep. He’s breathing heavily, his chest heaving and body shaking as he stares unseeing into the distance.

“What’s wrong, babe? What’s going on?” I ask, but as he quakes and shudders it takes a second for me to realize that he’sstillnot awake. That he’s still locked in whatever nightmare has a grip on him.

I try to stay calm, to just rub a gentle hand up and down his back while I murmur to him. But somewhere in the middle of all this, a giant sob tears from his chest—racking his body—and it’s so unlike him that it terrifies me even as it breaks my freaking heart.

“Hudson!” I call out more forcefully now, getting on my knees beside him so that I can try to get his attention better. “Hudson, wake up!”

Hoarse, terrifying noises continue to pour from his chest and throat. And I decide to hell with delicate and go straight for harsh, smacking him in the arm to wake him, to pull him from this nightmare.

When that doesn’t work and the tortured noises continue coming, I shake him as hard as I can. “Hudson! Wake up! Wake up!”

And when that still doesn’t work, I shake him even harder. “Hudson, damn it. Wake the hell up!”

He comes awake with a roar and a start, fangs bared and hands curled into fists even as he throws them up in front of his face in what is obviously a defensive move. And my heart breaks all the way open.

“Hudson, baby.” Part of me wants to wrap myself around him, but I’m terrified of scaring him even more. The last thing I want is for him to think he’s under attack.

“You’re okay,” I whisper to him, smoothing a hand over his hair. “I promise you’re okay.”

For long seconds, he doesn’t move. Just stays exactly where he is, frozen in whatever horror was running through his dreams.

And I don’t know if he’s wrapped up in all the terrible things we saw in the Curator’s room or if this is about something more. Something deeper. Something that has a lot to do with the sledgehammer he took to Cyrus’s office and the two hundred years he spent drowning in the dark.

“Grace?” he finally says, running a hand over his face.

“Hey,” I whisper, taking his other hand and bringing it to my lips. “You’re back.”

Hudson shakes his head, gives a half-hearted little smile. “I didn’t know I’d gone anywh—”

His voice breaks before he can finish whatever joke he was going for, and my heart freefalls into a spiral of rage and pain and love.

“It’s okay,” I tell him as I reach for him. “You’re okay.”

“I don’t know about that.” He kicks the covers off, evading my embrace as he climbs out of bed.

Another time, I might be hurt at his rejection of my touch, but this isn’t about me. And it’s not about us. It’s about all the terrible, terrible things that happened to Hudson before there was an us. And the deep-seated trauma that comes with all of them.

I suddenly realize the hardest thing my mate has ever asked me to do is let him work through this at his own speed. But that’s what loving someone is all about, right? Offering them everything they need for their own happiness—even if that’s space from you.

So instead of trying to cage him in my arms or offering comfort in any way, I let him walk away alone.

89

A Concert-ed

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