Fear

47

I didn't sleep. Again.

Every time I drifted, Emma's voice snapped me back awake. 'It wasn't a car crash. He lied.'

The words wouldn't dissolve with morning light the way nightmares were supposed to. They clung to the inside of my skull like damp fingerprints.

Tyler slept curled around me, one arm banded over my ribs, breathing slow and warm against the back of my neck as usual. I lay there for a long time, staring at the pale strip of sunlight crawling across the bedroom floor.

When I finally shifted, he stirred.

"Emily?" His voice was sleep-rough, a little husky but edged with worry. "Your breathing's fast. What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I whispered. "Just awake."

He pressed a slow kiss to my shoulder, lingering as if he could feel the tightness beneath my skin. His fingers brushed my hip, sliding beneath the blanket to touch my stomach, gentle and grounding.

But the touch didn't soothe me — not today. Not after last night.

I didn't know who or what to believe anymore. I didn't know whether I could trust Emma — a woman who I'd never even seen, by the way, not even a picture. So when my broken mind conjured up that image of her in the corner of the room yesterday, why had she looked so human and real?

So who should I have believed more? Tyler, who had seemed genuinely distraught to tell me about his dead wife? Or a fabricated image of her built from my own insecurities, distrust, fear, and psychosis?

Had I grown immune to the drugs? Probably. The hallucinations still continued even after Sam upped the dose.

The bottom line was: I was confused. Deeply, wrongly, and even in the safety of Tyler's arms, I still felt afraid. Afraid, I realised, not of him now (what a turn of events), but of myself. Of the thing I'd become as a result of extensive and significant trauma, changes, and events I had no control over.

I couldn't trust myself. Couldn't cope with the ideas swirling around my head, that I saw danger where there was none, tried to make untrue things that were, and tried to scare myself into believing things no one else would.

Who the fuck did I become?

—

"Can I get up for a minute?" I asked, barely able to get the words out.

Something in him hesitated, but he slowly removed his arm.

"Don't push your knee," he murmured. "Call for me if it hurts."

I didn't answer. I slipped out of bed, wincing as my leg protested, and padded to the hallway. The air out here was colder, still carrying remnants of the night. Goosebumps bloomed along my arms.

The stairs felt steeper than usual, each step radiating up my thigh and into my hip. I gripped the banister tightly, letting the cool wood steady me as I made my way down.

In the kitchen, morning light filtered through the blinds in thin white stripes. It smelled faintly of coffee and the lemon-scented cleaner Tyler used obsessively. The tiled floor was cold under my bare feet. I leaned against the counter, breathing deeply, trying to calm the spiralling inside my chest.

Then, footsteps behind me.

"Em?"

Tyler stood in the doorway, shoulders tense, hair messy, eyes squinting against the brightness. He glanced at my leg first, then at my face.

"What are you doing down here?" he asked quietly, softly.

"I needed air."

He nodded then. Believed it. It was true, I did need air. But I couldn't tell him what I was thinking. What I saw and heard yesterday from a dead woman. I got a glass and filled it with water from the tap. Took one sip and almost threw it across the room. Didn't. Instead, my hand shook.