by Teresa Hill
He'd like very much to have the right, himself, to go to Amanda right now, wrap his arms around her and hold her close, while he swore to her that everything was going to be okay. He wished he had the right to watch over her for as long as it took to make sure she was okay.
It was an odd feeling, wanting that responsibility, that right. If his childhood had taught him anything, it was that there was only so much anyone could do to protect someone else. It was better not to care so much, not to take that risk.
It was one thing to take care of himself. And it was something else completely when it was him and a team of guys with a mission. They all pulled their own weight. They had a goal, a problem to solve, and a limited amount of time to do it. The danger was usually clearly defined, and eliminating it eliminated the problem. Will liked solving problems.
Personal things, personal problems were different.
He didn't take responsibility for other people. He didn't have much of a personal life, and he liked it just fine.
But Amanda... God, Amanda?
Part of him wanted to get on a plane and go. Not that it was possible, not that instant. But soon, if he was lucky, he could. It wouldn't be easy, getting leave and then a series of cobbled-together military flights. Even with the best connections, it was about twenty-four hours of travel time from this part of the world back to Ohio. And if he was stuck on a plane for hours at a time, he wouldn't be able to talk to her. If something happened, and she needed him, just to talk, she wouldn't be able to.
He was an idiot, he realized.
It had already been twenty-four hours or so since it happened, and she couldn't have reached him if she needed him, no matter what she did, while he was on the mission.
What the fuck was he doing so far away when she needed him?
Chapter 23
Baxter, Ohio
Amanda had horrible nightmares.
She relived every moment of what happened in Buhkai, every second, felt everything, again and again. She was exhausted and hated her own thoughts, hated being inside her own head, but was terrified of sleep. Sleep was worse. In her sleep, she was helpless. The memories kept coming, and they were so vivid, so horrifyingly real.
She knew her father was there with her, sitting by her bed. Emma was there, sometimes. And then, something happened that really scared her, because it seemed so real.
For a while, she thought Will was with her, like she could conjure him up in her mind when she wanted to.
But she knew he wasn't here.
He'd done what he always did. He'd left, and she hadn't been able to do anything to make him stay. He'd told her from the start that he'd go. So this was no surprise.
She was still scared, still trembling. She was still crying, too, she realized as she put a hand to her wet cheeks. She didn't know what day it was or even if it was daytime or how long she'd been here like this. It felt like forever.
And she remembered everything now, every awful, painful thing. Her body still hurt, the way she vaguely remembered it had when she'd woken up in the hospital in Germany. Places where she'd been hit, punched, where it felt like she'd been stabbed... It all hurt. It was some odd twist of memory, like her body was insisting on being heard, on her feeling everything, not just remembering.
She thought of people she'd seen in movies or on TV who were beaten up and then got up and kept going, like nothing had happened.
Ridiculous, she thought. Impossible. This hurt. It really hurt, all over.
She looked back at the chair by her bed for her father. It was odd that he wasn't here, because he'd been afraid to leave her alone. Not that Amanda wanted to be alone. She didn't think she'd been alone since she'd managed to get back to the house. She wasn't even sure how she'd done that. The last thing she remembered clearly was being at the shelter watching coverage on TV of a school shooting. Hers, she'd thought for a while.
She whimpered, and then realized she wasn't alone. A woman came out of the far corner. She must have been sitting near the window.
"You're awake," the woman said. "I'm Joyce. Your aunt couldn't come, so your father hired me, so you don't have to be alone, remember?"
Maybe, Amanda decided. Vaguely.
"Feel up to talking to someone?"
Just one person. "Who?"
"A man named Will has called several times."
"Really?" This wasn't like looking over and thinking he was in the chair by her bed, was it?
The woman nodded. "He's traveling right now, but I promised him if you woke up, I'd ask if you wanted to speak to him. Want me to see if we can get him now?"
"Yes, please."
He must have called not long ago, because it looked like Joyce simply hit redial. As soon as she started to talk, Amanda grabbed the phone. "Will?"
"Amanda. Hi."
Her whole body drank in the sound of his voice, like something inside of her latched onto it and immediately felt better. It was almost as good as him being here. "It's really you?"
"Yes, honey. It is."
She held the phone pressed to the right side of her face and rolled onto her right side in bed, wishing so much he was here and holding her.
But this was almost as good. If it was real, of course.
Joyce left the room, but didn't close the door. Amanda suspected the woman was on the other side of the door eavesdropping, but she didn't care.
"Sorry," she told Will. "I had someone hovering. I think my father's scared to leave me alone, and he can't watch over me twenty-four hours a day, so he hired someone to help."
"I know, baby."
He knew?
Okay.
"Everybody's worried about you, Amanda."
"I know. All that time, I wanted to remember, and now that I do, it's so much harder. I thought it would be a relief to know. I thought since people told me what happened that remembering couldn't be that bad. But it was. It was like I was living it all over again, and now I keep doing that. I can't make it stop."
"Yeah. Bad memories can do that."
"I have to make it stop." She tried not to sound as desperate as she felt. This had to end. She could not go on like this. It was too horrible.
"You will. This part doesn't last forever. I promise."
"I know bad things happened to you, and I know you don't want to talk about it—"
"Tell me what you need, Amanda. You can ask me anything."
"How old were you? When it started, you know, to get bad?"
"When it started?"
He said it like he didn't understand the question, and he got quiet for a minute. She thought maybe the call had been dropped, feared he was gone. But finally, he started to talk again.
"It was just always that way," he said softly. "I don't remember a time when it wasn't. Not any one, awful thing, just chaos, all the time. That was the norm. You never knew what to expect. But I learned how to stay out of the way of the worst of it, how to take care of myself."
She had known it must have been awful, but he didn't even remember a time when it wasn't bad? Will obviously thought he could handle anything now, but Will at two or five or seven? What could he possibly have known about how to cope with all hell breaking loose in his home when he was so young?
"You do what you can to protect yourself," he said.
"Like what? I'm already hiding in my bedroom at my father's house—"
"No, I mean emotionally. You, uhh... if you're like me, you try hard not to let anyone matter to you, not to let anyone get too close, because if they don't matter, they can't hurt you. But that's me. You don't want to live like that, honey."
"I don't, but I have to do something. I can't live like this, Will. I can't feel like this."
"Okay, listen. You make a choice, Amanda. You decide you're done with all that crap that happened to you. You're done with it having any power over you. You're sick of thinking about it, sick of it messing up your life, and you push it down. You push it away, and get on with your life."
"
I don't know how to do that. How did you do it?"
"I think I just got to a point where I'd thought every bad thing. I'd been as mad as I could get. And I was sick of it. There was nothing else to think about it. There was nothing else to do. It was in the past. I was ready for it to be my past, to get the hell out of my way. It's a mind game. The thoughts come in maybe a million times a day at first, and you push them away just as many times. The next day, it's not quite a million, and you keep pushing. It gets easier with time. You get busy, building a life that's different. One that's better. You have other things to think about. You stay busy, stay focused, and soon, you've done it. Your life is no longer dominated by all the crap that happened to you. You can do that, Amanda. I know you can."
"I feel like I'm stuck. I'm stuck inside my head. With nothing but my thoughts."
"Then get out of your head. Running helped me. I'd run until I couldn't, until I was so tired I could sleep and not have nightmares. I started lifting weights at some point. I started boxing. I liked that, hitting things without... you know, really hurting people. There were rules, strategies. You had to think. It wasn't getting mad and going off on someone. It was strength and endurance, quickness. It was a contest I could win. I liked that. I needed it."
"I'm glad you found something that helped."
"You'll find something, too."
She hoped so. Much as she hated the way she felt right now, in this room, the idea of leaving it terrified her. Like so many things just outside the door could hurt her. And she knew that was ridiculous, that she was perfectly safe in her father's house. But that wasn't how she felt.
"You can do this, Amanda. It won't always be this hard."
She wanted to believe him, but everything felt so bad. She couldn't imagine ever feeling anything but bad. How could she do that? Always be so scared? Feel so bad?
"Amanda, they're talking about hospitalizing you. Did you know that?"
"No," she whispered, feeling sick at the idea.
"You know what that means?"
A psychiatric hospital, he meant.
She'd sunk that low?
God.
"You have to promise me that you're not going to do anything to hurt yourself," he said.
It was that bad?
She couldn't breathe for a minute. Fear sliced through her, leaving her feeling wide open and so vulnerable, so... damaged.
"Amanda, promise me," he said, a fierce urgency in his words. "You promise me, right now."
"I'm not going to hurt myself," she whispered. "I promise."
"I want you to make that same promise to your father and to Emma. Can you do that?"
"I will. I can do it."
"You can. I know you can. Listen, I'm on a plane that's about to take off, so I have to turn off my phone in a minute. I'm sorry I'm so far away. I'm going to be there as soon as I can."
"You're coming?"
"Yes, I'm on my way."
She let out a shuddering breath, sobbing as she did.
"Oh, baby. Don't. Please don't do that. I'll be right there, I swear—"
"No!"
"What do you mean, no?"
She was more messed up, more pathetic than ever. She didn't think she could get out of her own bed. She didn't have the strength. She just kept lying here, and all these awful thoughts kept running through her head, all the memories.
"I don't want you to see me like this," she said finally.
"Why the hell not? You need me now."
"I've always needed you. I think I always will, but... Will, you always said you wouldn't stay. You were clear about that. I'm going to have to learn to live without you eventually."
"Not now, you don't. I'm going to be there as soon as it's physically possible—"
"Please, don't."
"Look, I'm sorry. I can't keep talking now. They'll kick me off the plane if I do, and then it'll take me even longer to get to you. We'll sort this out when I get there. Just remember what you promised me. Say it for me again, right now."
"I promise. I won't do anything."
"Okay. It's late. Try to sleep. Hopefully, I'll be there when you wake up."
And then he was gone.
She lay there, holding the phone, wanting him back, even just his voice, when she knew very well she'd told him not to come.
Joyce came and gently took the phone from her, kindly asked if she'd like some water, maybe some soup, because she hadn't eaten in a couple of days.
Amanda shook her head. She didn't want anything.
Her tears fell again. She drifted along, thought she must have been given something to help her sleep, because she wasn't so scared anymore. All those scary thoughts in her head got quieter, farther away. That was better.
* * *
She dreamed of Will, had nightmares about Buhkai and what she'd seen on TV at that school in Connecticut. She saw clearly the face of the man who'd raped her on the floor of her classroom, remembered thinking he was going to kill her, kill all of them, the kids and the teachers taken hostage.
Emma came to see her again. Her father was there, sleeping in a chair by her bed, the way he had in the hospital in Germany.
Sometimes, she thought Will was already there.
Her head, she thought, wasn't as completely full of the memories as it had been. The scenes weren't playing through her mind quite as quickly. They weren't crowding out everything else anymore.
A few normal thoughts crept in.
She considered getting out of bed long enough to take a shower, sipped from the cup of water on her nightstand so her mouth wasn't quite as dry. Her body, she thought, didn't ache quite as much.
She looked up at the window and saw light starting to show there. So it was morning, almost.
Maybe she'd get up today.
She had to eventually.
Amanda rolled over in her bed to face the room instead of her corner, and there in the chair was a man. Not her father.
Still half-asleep, she blinked to try to clear her vision.
It looked like Will, sprawled out asleep in a chair by her bed.
She drank in the sight of him, wondering if she'd actually talked to him on the phone or if she'd imagined it.
If it was him, his hair was longer than she was used to seeing it. But the image was familiar in other ways—that appealing shadow of stubble on his jaw, the lean body, the long legs stretched out in front of him. She could even smell that Will smell, that hint of heat and man she loved.
He stirred a bit, like he was trying to get more comfortable in the chair, and then his eyes opened and fixed on her. He looked for a moment as wary as she felt as she tried to figure out if he was real.
Maybe they hadn't gotten out of Buhkai.
Maybe everything to this point had been a dream, and she'd never made it home safely. Maybe they were still there, and Will was still trying to save her. And the men who had stormed into the school, the man who'd raped her, was still nearby. Maybe that's why her body hurt so much. Maybe that's why it felt like everything had just happened.
She cried out, her hand coming too late to stifle the sound.
Oh, God. Please don't let us still be back there.
"Hey, hey, hey." Will sat up, and then slid to the floor on his knees by her bed, so that they were on the same level, his face a few inches from hers. "It's okay. It's me. You're fine. You're safe."
"Promise?" she whispered.
"I promise."
"Where are we?"
He looked a little scared at that. "We're in your bedroom, in your father's house."
"Not in Buhkai?"
"No. That was almost a year ago. You got out. You're safe. I promise."
"You got me out," she said, because she was still trying to convince herself he was real, that all of this was real.
"Yes, I got you out."
Thank God.
Thank you, God.
She couldn't imagine what else might have happened to her, if he hadn't gotten her out of th
ere.
"I keep dreaming that I'm back there," she said.
"You're not. You're right here, safe, in your father's house."
"And you're here?" She had to ask, had to know.
"Yes, I'm here. I told you I would be."
She nodded, remembering. The phone call must have been real. "I told you not to come."
"You did. I didn't listen."
No, he hadn't. She couldn't be sorry about that right now. "Why are you sleeping in the chair?"
The ends of his mouth curled up the tiniest bit, and he stopped looking so grim and tired. "Does that mean I can climb into that bed and hold you?"
"If you want to."
"I want to."
She scooted over on the bed, making room for him. He pulled off his boots and socks and dropped his cargo pants but left his underwear on. He peeled off two layers of T-shirts, and then, moving slowly, carefully, climbed into the bed and stretched out on his back, holding an arm out to her in invitation.
She rolled into that spot against his side, her head on his shoulder, one hand on his chest. His arm came loosely around her. He never held her tightly. He knew better, was so careful with her.
Perfect, she thought.
The man was perfect.
Except for the annoying way he kept promising to leave her eventually.
She couldn't think about that now. Later, she would. Not now.
She was too relieved he was here, too busy soaking up the heat of his body, the way she felt so safe against his bulk and strength.
"I'm sorry, honey. I'm so sorry I was so far away when you needed me."
Tears filled her eyes. The thing was, she'd always need him.
"Do you want to hear about it? What happened that day at the school?"
"If you want to tell me."
"No. Not really. But I think I need to say it to somebody." Him or Emma, at least. And he was the one who was here. He was the one who'd saved her. He should know. "I wasn't brave."
"I don't believe that," he whispered, his hand lightly stroking up and down her arm.
"No, I wasn't. I was so scared."
* * *
Buhkai, Africa
January 16th
Amanda Warren's class of five-year-olds were just settling into their seats for the start of their day when she heard the first inklings of trouble.
