Louise Bentley is a feisty, wild, 'let's-go-to-Capri-for-the-weekend-yeah?' kind of girl. She spends her days working at a party-planning company. Oh, and she never wants kids. Ever.
Ben Langford is a studious, quiet, 'I'm-busy-reading' sort of man...
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Ben was crouched over her. His knees sunk into the bed, and his dark hair was messy with sleep. His green eyes were painfully bright in the darkness, twin blades sharp enough to slice through you, when he chose to wield them.
"It's me," he said.
"What—?" Louise twisted. "Where am I?"
The lingering effects of the nightmare were fading away, replaced by a rising sense of embarrassment. The pain in her arms lessened, and she realized that Ben had been pinning her arms to the bed.
"You're at home," Ben said. "You're safe. Sorry about the — ah —" He gestured to her sore wrists. "You knocked over a clock."
Louise sat up, squinting through the darkness. Sure enough, glass was scattered across the floor, glinting like diamonds in the moonlight filtering through the window. She pulled her knees into her chest.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"It's alright," Ben murmured. "Don't apologize."
She ran a shaky hand over her face. "I'm so embarrassed."
"For what?"
"This." Her heart was pounding. "Me."
Ben's face tightened. "You don't need to be ashamed of being afraid."
"I'm not," she whispered. "But I'm ashamed that you're seeing it."
There was a long pause. She felt the bed dip, and a moment later, Ben's arms were wrapped around her. He smelled of sandalwood soap and pine and laundry detergent, and his grey t-shirt was soft against her cheek. His hands stroked her spine, and she stiffened at first before relaxing into it, like sliding into a hot bath.
"I have them too, you know." His voice was soft. "The nightmares."
"You do?"
She felt him nod. "I dream that James is trapped in a burning city on the other side of the world. And I have to listen over the phone as he says goodbye to me." His thumb switched to circles. "It's hard, isn't it?"
Louise closed her eyes. Hard. There was a world of pain in that one word. But how did you describe the sensation of grief? There were days that she wanted to claw her way out of her own skin. Days that she woke up in a terrible fog of numbness only to look in the mirror and realize that she was crying. How did you describe that pain?
It was the kind of all-consuming fear that sunk into your bones. That knit into your soul. To rip out that sort of fear, Louise thought, you would have to destroy yourself.
"I'm always crying around you," she said.
The circles paused. "What do you mean?"
Louise made a strangled sound that could have been a laugh. "At the funeral. After Vienna was sick. Now..." She shook her head. "I'm going to ruin all your shirts."
