Thud.
Thud.
Thud.
A gurgling sound echoes in the air as if someone is choking on their own blood.
Or vomit.
My eyes snap open. I’m immediately alert, my heart beating loudly as the scene materializes in front of me.
Lia is thrashing in her sleep, her feet kicking in the air, and her body is heavy like a rock being thrown to the bottom of an ocean.
Both of her hands are fisted so tightly that there’s a cut on her palm from her nails and droplets of blood color the white sheets in red.
But that’s not what woke me up. It was the sound.
The gurgling.
The choking on her own saliva.
Two lines of drool cascade down her chin and neck, a foam rapidly forming at her mouth.
“Lia!”
She doesn’t show any sign of hearing me and continues thrashing, squirming. Gurgling.
I shove two fingers into her mouth and open it wide in an attempt to help her breathe.
She doesn’t.
It’s like she’s blocking her own trachea with an imaginary gag.
“Lia! Wake up!” I place a hand under her head, carefully lifting her up. She drags the sheets in her fisted hand, her body still snapped rigid like a board.
Her head moves sideways, then rolls so far back, the position would’ve snapped her neck if she were on her own. I support her nape and keep probing her mouth open with my other hand.
Her lips are turning blue and her face is reddening. She’s not breathing, and hasn’t in at least a fucking minute.
“Lia!” I shake her, but that brings me no result.
She’s lost somewhere I can’t reach. Somewhere that she can keep herself hidden away from me under lock and key.
Nothing will bring her out.
Except maybe…
“Winter,” I call cautiously, to which she sucks in a deep breath, gasping and coughing as the air hits her lungs. I release her mouth so she can breathe properly.
As I watch her inhaling oxygen into her lungs, allowing life back in, I should be relieved. I am. But barbed wires wind around my chest, pricking my skin, inch by each agonizing inch.
Her eyes slowly open, but their blue is blank, as if she doesn’t know who or where she is.
I hold my breath as the seconds tick by and she remains like that, caught in a trance.
“Lenochka?”
She blinks once, twice, before her gaze meets mine. Moisture gathers in her eyes and a tear slides down her cheek. I wipe it with the pad of my thumb as she shakes uncontrollably in my arms.
Seeming to be out of her trance, she bolts upright, kneeling in front of me on the bed. Her expression is frantic now as she clutches my bicep, moves her hand up, then checks my side, my chest, and even my back.
She’s touching me everywhere, feeling, inspecting, completely oblivious to how hard I’ve become in the short span of her ministrations.
I’ve had blue balls since she first walked into this bedroom, but I can’t fuck her just yet. Not when she’s having all these nightmares and building her walls.
“You’re not shot,” she breathes out in a whisper.
“Do I look like I am?” I try to keep my voice calm, even though my jaw is clenching, and not only because of being hard, but because she responded to Winter and not Lia.
“No. But it felt so real, so visceral…” She palms my cheek and freezes when she feels my jaw tightening under her hold, then swiftly drops her hand to her side.
“Another nightmare?”
She nods once.
It’s not the first time I’ve had to wake her up because of a nightmare. It’s happened twice in the past week, but she didn’t really open her eyes and talk. She just fell back to sleep, so I doubt she remembers them.
I do, though.
The gurgling, choking sounds she makes is like my custom-made hell. Sometimes, I hear it even when I’m awake and I have to check on the cameras in case it’s happening in real time.
“Lia was there,” she says quietly. “She wanted to kill me and then…then…”
I touch her arm gently. “You don’t have to talk about it.”
She stares up at me with those huge eyes. They’re lost like she doesn’t know who she’s looking at and she’s somehow still trapped inside the nightmare.
“Why did you bring me here, Adrian?” she murmurs, her voice pained.
“You know.”
“Because I look like Lia?”
I nod.
“I’m not her. And the more you compare me to her, the more I feel myself being erased, forgotten. I don’t want to be forgotten.”
I grab her by the arm and try to put her under the sheet. “Sleep for now.”
“No.” She yanks her arm free. “I don’t want to sleep.”
“Then what do you want?”
“Winter. For once, just call me Winter. Please.”
I did and I hated it. I hated it so much that I want to pour bleach down my fucking throat.
“No.”
“Please…” Tears cascade down her cheeks. “Please don’t erase me. Please, Adrian.”
“Don’t beg me for something like that. You’re Lia. Get used to it.”
A sob tears from her throat, and her lips purse, one of them battered and cut from how much she bites down on it.
That has to heal before she’s ever seen in public. She needs to snap out of it, but I know it won’t be easy to have her comply. That is, if it’s possible at all.
This time, she doesn’t resist as I tuck her under the covers. She willingly closes her eyes and whispers, “I wish I’d never met you.”
My lips brush against her forehead. “I’ll meet you over and over again if I have to.”
