bitch!” his father howled, turning back to the front of the trailer. Even though blood dripped down his neck, he stalked back to where Kyle knew Mom was waiting.
Not sure who he was trying to save, if anyone, Kyle scrambled for his parents’ bedroom. He fumbled with a drawer, pulled out the gun with his shaking hands.
End it, his mind whispered. End it. Fear was replaced by something steely and steady in his gut. His hands stopped shaking and his feet led him to the living room. There was no shock in seeing his father’s hands around his mother’s neck as her legs flailed and her eyes bulged.
Kyle walked right up to his father and pressed the gun in his back. “Stop.” His voice wasn’t steady, wasn’t even a command, and his father looked over his shoulder at him and the gun with a sneer.
“You wouldn’t shoot me, you pansy-ass piece of shit.” Kyle jumped back as his father’s hands dropped from his mother’s neck and reached for him.
“Try me.” He held the gun steady, trained on his father’s head. He wanted this. He wanted to pull the trigger and end everything once and for all.
The sound of sirens stopped him and the world went black.
When Kyle woke up from the nightmare, he flipped on every light in his room. He sucked in a breath, let it out slowly. As nightmares went, it was tame enough. Nothing more than the truth. Nothing as jarring as when the dreams turned to fiction and he pulled the trigger. Killing his father and feeling immense satisfaction in it.
Kyle swallowed down the nausea rushing up his throat. Even though his legs were weak, he purposefully strode to his office. He flipped on every light there, too.
His hands shook, but he brought the computer to life and began to type a memo to Leah, Jacob’s go-to electrician.
He worked for an hour before he was moderately confident the dream wouldn’t return. Between his five-mile run and the two hours of sleep he’d managed before the dream, surely he’d be exhausted enough to sleep soundly now.
He shut down the computer and turned off the lights, but when he stepped into the hallway he heard a thud come from down the hall. From Grace’s room.
Worry leaped to action, but reasonable Kyle kept it tamped down as he slowly made his way down the hall. Another thump was followed by a crash. Kyle jogged the last few strides and knocked on Grace’s door, his heart beating too fast for comfort. “Grace?”
She mumbled something, there was another thump, and then she opened the door, light from her room pouring into the hallway. She looked disheveled by sleep, her hair a tangled mess, her too-thin tank top’s straps hanging off her shoulders.
“Are you all right?” Since he was doing everything in his power not to look at her bare shoulders or below, he studied her face. She looked pale, and she was shaking. Kyle frowned. “What’s wrong?”
She hugged herself and shook her head. “Nothing. I’m fine.”
“Sit,” Kyle ordered, pointing to the bed. He noticed her easel was upended and deduced that it had been the source of the crash. He also saw a half-empty water bottle on the floor, picked it up and shoved it at her. “Take a drink.”
Surprisingly, she obeyed by taking a long, loud gulp. Because her damn shirt was practically see-through, he pulled the coverlet tangled at the end of the bed over her shoulders. “What happened?”
“I had a dream. That’s all. It woke me up.” She was still pale, shaking, lost. Since he knew the feeling all too well, he sank onto the bed next to her. Reminding himself it was just a friendly gesture, he put his hand on hers.
“What happened over there?”
“I was trying to get to the light, but I tripped.” She let out a loud shaky breath. “And it hurt like a bitch,” she squeaked, obviously losing the battle with tears.
He’d been there a few times himself. So he patted her hand and let her cry, one part of his brain telling him to comfort her, the other telling him to run away. Instead, he was frozen. Offering half comfort.
When she was breathing almost evenly again she pulled her hand away and mopped up her tears with the backs of her hands. “I guess bad things have a way of sticking with your subconscious.”
As he well knew. What he didn’t know was what to say. Actually, he did know what to say; words of commiseration fumbled through his brain. “Yes, they do.”
“If I wasn’t loud enough to wake Jacob, you must have been awake already. Bad dreams, too?”
She was close and smelled like paint and flowers, and the words fumbling in his brain wanted to get out, but he couldn’t. If he let them out, they would never go away. And she’d know and... Kyle stood abruptly. “I should get back to bed. Early day tomorrow.”
“Kyle.”
But he couldn’t stop. He had to be alone where he could beat back the words and images and everything else. Where Grace’s pretty face and direct questions didn’t tempt him away from the protections he’d built.
CHAPTER THREE
KYLE TRUDGED DOWN the back staircase, the smell of coffee a shining beacon after a terrible night. If he’d gotten three hours of patchy sleep he’d consider himself lucky.
Voices drifted up the stairwell, and when Kyle reached the bottom he found Jacob and Grace sitting at the kitchen table laughing over cereal.
His stomach cramped at the realization that mornings in the McKnight household were likely always like this. Bright, cozy laughter. With last night’s dream still flashing vividly through his mind, it was hard to swallow.
What had mornings been like in the Clark trailer? Overpowered by the stench of alcohol or drugs and vomit or piss. A quiet so deep and lonely, but safe. Blissfully safe.
Without greeting, Kyle walked over to the coffeepot and poured himself a mug. He felt too sick to his stomach to take a sip.
“Hey, man, you okay? Looking a little green.”
Kyle turned, tried to smile, but knew it came out a grimace as he saw two pairs of brown eyes staring at him. He didn’t want to be studied or worried about at the moment. Especially not by two perfect people.
Not that either were perfect perfect, but they seemed that way in the aftereffects of a two-nightmare night. His encounter with Grace had left him primed and ready for nightmare number two, and he’d woken feeling vulnerable.
Kyle refused to do vulnerable.
“Kyle?”
“Right. I’m fine.” He forced himself to take a sip from his mug. “Just needed a little jolt.” He lifted the mug, attempted another smile.
Grace shook a box of cereal at him. “Going to eat?”
He had no desire to fill his already queasy stomach with sugary cereal to go along with the bitter coffee, but he also didn’t want to appear rude. With a tight smile he retrieved a bowl and his own cereal, sans marshmallows, and took a seat
