The Nightmare Daze

10. Secret Smiles

Hello loves! If you have read the previous version of TND, I beg you **do not post spoilers** in the comments! It'll be more fun for new folks if they don't know what's coming. And besides...you might be surprised by what's changed :D

XX

Isabel

This place is so quiet; there are no children playing, and there are not enough people to warrant the clanging of pots and pans in the kitchen. I don't remember any mornings so quiet before I married Elliot. Most days I wake up to the silence of my bedroom and the light bursting through the windows which I refuse to cover with curtains. I'm afraid that if the sun didn't wake me up, I would have no reason to rise anymore.

Except this morning, I awake as Elliot carefully slips his arm away from me. Perhaps its because he doesn't want to disturb my sleep, but I can't help but feel that he simply doesn't want to talk before he sneaks away from my bedroom. I'm ashamed at how easily I caved to him when he returned, but what choice do I have? I can't refuse him forever. What's more, I don't want to. He offers a connection and closeness that I crave, even if it's only on the nights when he joins me in bed. It's all that I have. And it's what makes me reach for him as he slides out of bed.

"I thought you were still asleep," he says softly, and I like the way his face hasn't hardened to the day quite yet.

"Just stay a little longer." I don't want to beg him, but the cold seeping into the place where he laid makes me feel hollow. Elliot hesitates for a long moment, in which I'm braced once again for his rejection. But then he lays back among the pillows and pulls the blankets over him. I don't care that his arm doesn't wrap around me when I lay against his chest. It's enough that he stayed.

"I'm leaving today."

"Oh." He's barely been back a week. I haven't even been able to show him what I've done with the library. I only want one day with him—just one—but he's so annoyed when I ask. I don't want to have to ask. I don't want to have to nag him to tell me when he's leaving and when he's going to return. It hasn't take long for me to feel a little crazy. But then he leaves and I realize that I want what any person would. It only makes me angrier at how he treats me like a petulant child when I ask after him. If I never asked, we would never speak, save in the dark.

"You're not going to ask me for details?"

"Are you offering?" Our beds are a sanctuary from the bitterness. I don't want to invite it here.

"I'm going back to London for a few weeks."

"Weeks?" This time I sit up in bed, pulling the covers above my breasts. "We barely know each other and already you're gone more than you're here."

"What is it you want to know?"

"You know what I mean, Elliot." I close my eyes and rest my head against the carved wooden headboard. He never wants to argue, and yet he refuses to actually listen when I speak. "I don't want to beg you to know me. Some day I'll stop trying and you'll have lost your chance."

"Are you threatening me?" I despise the teasing tone of his voice.

"No. That's just how people work. You can't expect me to keep trying forever."

"I'm not asking you to try."

I rest my hand against his chest, turning slightly to look at him as I trace his collarbone. "That's just it. By the time you care it will be too late."

He doesn't reply, but he holds my gaze as I touch him, flattening my hand to smooth over his chest and stomach. When I trace along his thigh, his eyes flutter ever so slightly, but he doesn't move.