Page 117

SUMMER AT OLD HALL HOUSE

Hugh

AUGUST 28, 2000

A FTER SPENDING THE ENTIRE SUMMER CRASHING ON A BLOW-UP MATTRESS IN L IZZIE’S room, I felt secure in the knowledge that if I didn’t make it as a cardiothoracic surgeon, I could easily turn my hand to oncology or psychiatry.

I was certainly prepared for it.

I was quite aware that my calm approach in a medical crisis was in direct contrast to most lads my age, but then again, most lads my age weren’t fascinated by aortic root surgery.

The only thing that seemed to get in my way was my heart and how it seemed to beat solely for the girl whose room I was crashing in. Because when she was in pain, holy fuck did I feel it, too.

Every night without fail, Liz would wake in a panicked state, and every night without fail, nobody would come to check on her. It didn’t matter how loud she screamed or how frantic she became; she was left alone with her demons.

The first night it happened, I remained rigid on my mattress, too afraid to go to her in case her father came into the room and thought I was getting notions—something he made implicitly clear I was not to get.

I understood that Catherine was too frail right now and physically incapable of coming to her daughter’s aid, but Mike had two perfectly good legs—and two perfectly good ears.

When no one showed up that night, and Liz continued to cry, I had taken matters into my own hands and climbed into bed with her. When she realized I was there, she had scrambled on top of me and clung to my body tighter than Gibsie did when he had a bad dream.

After that night, it had become a habit. Liz would wake in the middle of the night, and I would climb out of my bed and into hers. From there, she would wrap her limbs around me and hold on for dear life, while I whispered words of comfort in her ear. The crying would stop, but the violent shaking would continue until the sun came back up. She never let go until the room was bright enough to cast the shadows out, and neither did I.

Some nights she would ramble fervently about the monsters in her room, scary ladies in her head, and the nightmares that plagued her. While her late-night whispers were rarely coherent, I listened carefully to every word because I knew she was trying to tell me something important. Something her mind refused to make sense of.

Every night, I waited for my girlfriend to beckon me to her bedside, and then I listened intently, willing that brilliant mind of hers to throw me a bone to work with. Just one tiny scrap of a coherent memory so I could help her.

I knew the evidence was nonexistent, and my mother thought I was doing more harm than good by indulging her, but my heart assured me I was onto something. I’d known Liz for most of my life, and something deep inside assured me that I should trust her instincts on this. Hell, even my own gut instinct, the one that never steered me wrong, demanded I believe her.

Therefore, I would continue to back her up one hundred and fifty percent both in public and in private until I took my last breath. The only thing I couldn’t support her with was her insistence on punishing Gibs for a potential crime he had no part in, and while my girlfriend was determined to condemn every member of the Allen family, blood related or not, I reserved my condemnation solely for Mark.

I couldn’t say the past few months hadn’t been a challenge, and I’d always thought I understood my girlfriend’s mental health better than most, but I couldn’t have been more naive.

Clearly, Liz had saved up every ounce of energy and joy for our daily visits, because seeing what she went through in a standard twenty-four hours broke my fucking heart.

Because her mind wasn’t just complicated; it tortured her to the point where I found myself understanding her sudden and drastic shifts in mood.

The worst was the self-harming—something that I learned she did daily. That really took the air out of my lungs. Knowing that if I turned my back at any given moment, she could and would take a razor to her flesh. I’d caught her on three occasions, and those three fights were the only time I had ever raised my voice to her.

Because I needed her to hear me.

Because I needed her to know what when she cut herself, she cut me, too.

“Hugh?” Liz whispered in the silence, and the sudden intrusion of her voice, not to mention the hand she stretched over the side of her bed to trail her fingers in my hair, all but gave me a damn heart attack. “Are you awake?”

“Yeah, Liz.” I blew out a breath, chest heaving. “I’m awake.” When her fingers continued to tousle my hair, I reached an arm up and rested my hand on the edge of her mattress. “Did you have another nightmare?”

“I think so,” she replied softly, snatching up my hand in hers. “But I don’t know if I was asleep when it happened.”

“Do you want to talk about…” My words quickly trailed off when my girlfriend rolled off the side of her bed and onto the mattress beside me.

“Hi,” she breathed, settling on her side, facing me.

“Hi,” I replied, swallowing deeply. “Did you just fall out of your bed?”

Liz shook her head, and the intense way she was looking at me caused every hair on my body to stand to attention. “You’re leaving tomorrow.”

“Yeah, I sort of have to.” A dull ache settled in my chest. “School starts the day after.”

“I don’t want to sleep without you tonight,” she whispered, reaching up to stroke my jaw. “Not when it’s our last night.”

Careful to not read this wrong, I slowly raised my arm and waited for her reaction. When she immediately burrowed her head into the crook of my arm, I relaxed and wrapped my arm around her. “It’s not our last night,” I promised, voice thick and gruff. “We’ll have thousands of more nights together.”

Inhaling deeply, Liz draped one long leg over my hips and flattened her palm over my bare stomach. “You always smell so good.”

“Well, I sort of have to, now don’t I?” I teased, striving to keep my mind off the way my body was steadily burning up. “When my girlfriend spends most of her days sniffing me.”

“True,” she mused, fingers moving to my navel. “Hey, did you know you have hair under your belly button now?”

That wasn’t the only place I had hair, but I sure as hell wasn’t about to tell her that. Not when I was doing everything I could to mentally counsel my body into calming the hell down.

“Hugh?”

“Hm?”

“Did you hear me?”

“Yeah, Liz.” I cleared my throat and snatched her hand up in mine. “I heard you.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, sounding guilty. “Was that a bad touch?”

“No.” I shook my head and repressed a shiver. “Not bad. Just unexpected.”

“Oh.” She moved closer, wreaking havoc on my poor fucking heart. “Hugh?”

“Yeah, Liz?” I replied, clenching my eyes shut when her inner thigh settled on top of me.

“When do we get to touch?”

Forget swallowing; I damn near choked on my spit when she asked me that. “Touch?”

“Yeah,” she breathed, nuzzling my shoulder with her cheek. “Like how girlfriends and boyfriends touch each other.”

Fuck, I couldn’t hide it anymore.

“What’s that?” she asked then, clearly noticing my problem.

Jesus Christ, my mother was right .

My heart loved this girl, but my body was definitely lusting for her.

Aw, crap .

“We can touch when we’re a lot older than this,” I strangled out, desperately seeking out common sense and self-restraint in the haze of lust settling over me. “When we’re both in secondary school.”

“But you’ll be in secondary school for two years before I get there,” she protested. “What if you find some other girl to touch?”

“I won’t.”

“But what if you do?”

“I won’t , Liz,” I repeated, feeling my legs tremble. “I won’t.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I know it won’t happen.”

“But how do you know?”

“Because I only want to touch you.”

Her breath hitched. “You do?”

“Yeah,” I replied before quickly adding, “when we’re older .”

“How much older?”

“I already told you when we’re in secondary school,” I replied, recapturing up her hand when it started to trail down my stomach again. “There’s no rush, Liz, and I’m not going to go off looking or touching any other girls when I start secondary school, okay?”

“Or kissing?”

“Or kissing,” I confirmed. “I won’t do any of those things, so all you need to do is have patience and trust me, because I’m not going to do anything that could hurt you.”

“I do trust you, Hugh.”

“Good.” Rolling onto my side to face her, I pressed a hand to her cheek and smiled. “Because we have all the time in the world for that kind of thing.”

Sunken, pale-blue eyes peered back at me. “Okay.”

“I love you,” I whispered then, needing her to know. “No matter what.”

“I love you, too.” My words caused the light in her eyes to reappear. “No matter what.”

“Do you want to tell me about your nightmare?” I asked then, needing to steer the conversation back to something I could handle. “The one you thought you weren’t asleep in?”

Her body tensed up immediately. “I was in a room.”

“This room?”

She shook her head. “A different room.”

“Okay.” Keeping my tone gentle, I continued to stroke her cheek with my thumb. “What else was in the room?”

“A bed.”

“Were you in the bed?”

“No.” Liz shook her head. “She was.”

“Caoimhe?”

She offered me a stiff nod. “She was crying.”

“That sounds scary.” My heart started to gallop in my chest, but I didn’t dare let her know that. Instead, I kept my voice as soothing and relaxed as I could when I asked, “Was there anyone else in the room?”

She shook her head frantically before nodding.

“There was?”

She shook her head again and then nodded.

“There wasn’t?”

“I don’t know.” Clenching her eyes shut, Liz expelled a shaky breath. “I don’t want to think about it anymore.”

“Okay,” I replied when all I wanted to scream was no, don’t stop now . I couldn’t do that to her, though. Not when I was going home tomorrow and wouldn’t be here to pick up the pieces. “We don’t have to talk about it tonight.” Draping an arm around her narrow waist, I pulled her close so that our chests were flush. “Try and get some sleep, okay?”

“What if the monster crawls out of my dreams?”

“I’ll be right here,” I promised, tightening my hold on her. “Watching over you.”

“And keeping me safe?”

“Yeah, Liz,” I croaked out, feeling my heart crack. “Keeping you safe.”