Page 38 of What He Doesn't Know

Once he was back to work, I let myself out of his study as quietly as I could.

It was fine that he had to work. So, he’d spent one Sunday locked away — there were plenty of Sundays. Just one week before, we’d spent almost the entire day on the couch together, me reading and him looking over his week’s plans. He had worked a little, but he’d also been there with me — holding me, watching the television at times, rubbing my feet when they rested in his lap.

Marriage was about compromise. He promised me a dance, and I knew I’d get it. Just not tonight.

I padded into the kitchen, clicking on the speaker and swaying my hips to John Legend as I fixed a mug of hot chocolate. And I smiled, because it was Sunday, after all.

Everything is just fine.

The chocolate seemed to help, along with a movie, and I felt marginally better by the time Cameron and I finally crawled into bed that night.

Just before he clicked off the lamp, I told Cameron about the news from Graham.

He stilled, the moment stretching between us for a long second before he pulled the sheets up to this chest.

“That’s wonderful,” he finally said.

“It is, right?”

I willed Cameron to pull me into him, to ask me how I felt, to ask if I was okay with it all. He had to know. He had to feel it, too — the mixture of joy and pain. Did he have a hole in his heart, too? Was it aching with this news the same way mine had?

But I couldn’t be sure, because he didn’t hold me or ask me anything, at all. He just rolled over, his back to me, and said his last words of the night with absolute nonchalance.

“We’ll have to send them a gift.”

He fell asleep just moments later, his breaths evening out, and I laid with my eyes on the ceiling.

That was just Cameron — he never had many words, and I was one of the few people in his life who knew the reason why. An abusive father who punished you every time you spoke will do that to you, make you careful with your words. When Cameron did speak, it was purposeful, and always after he’d thought on those words for a long time.

He’d come around. He’d ask me how I felt, and we’d work through this new journey together — just like we always did.

So, as I rolled onto my side, slipping one arm around his middle and curling my knees into the back of his legs, I repeated what I’d told myself in the kitchen earlier.

Everything is just fine.

And I think I really believed it, too.

Reese

It wasn’t the first time I’d woken up in sheets drenched with sweat, but it was the first time in the new house.

I shot up out of bed, the faces from my dream just as vivid in the dark of my room, so much so that I almost reached out to touch them. My chest heaved, drops of sweat beading across my pecs as realization slowly came to me. With every blink of my eyes, my skin cooled. My fear subsided in a slow trickle, the images that had woken me fading to black like they were drowning in a silent river.

It had been a night terror, one I should have been used to having by now, but wasn’t. It was the day of the shooting, my family’s faces, the screams ringing out around me as I watched my father cover my mother and sister. They looked at me with absolute panic in their eyes, but their screams, their pleas — they were muted.

I couldn’t hear them, couldn’t reach them, couldn’t save them.

And it was me holding the gun.

I scrubbed a hand over my face, wiping sweat away as a frustrated breath left my lips. Swinging the sheets back, I let the cold air assault my slick, hot skin, my feet already carrying me to the shower. I turned the faucet and let the water warm, stripping out of my damp clothes before finally facing myself in the mirror.

I looked as awful as I felt.

Blake had convinced me to see a therapist after the third time I’d had the same night terror in New York City.It’s your guilt, an old man who knew nothing about me had said.You’re holding the gun in the dream as a symbol of the responsibility you feel for not being there with them that day.

At the time, I thought it was bullshit. But now, I wasn’t so sure.

Once the water was hot, I stepped inside, letting it run over my hair and down my back. I swept my hair back from my face, forcing a breath as my eyes focused on the tile my hand was splayed on in front of me.