I Blame Wattpad for My High Expectations of Men

Chapter 50 - You okay, babe?

*Author's Note: I'm extremely grateful for the new total of 1k views and 50+ votes that my book has gotten since the last time I updated. Special S/O to @hjpotter123 for always commenting, sharing her honest thoughts and voting while reading; much love for you, fam! That being said, here is the next chapter to IBWFMHEOM! Hope you enjoy it! Stay blessed! :)*

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        There's quite a lot of things that we don't get to choose in life, things that rather choose us instead, and one of those things would have to be our nightmares.

        Now, I don't know about you guys, but I rarely ever have them anymore. That being said, on the off chance that I do, just one of them is more than enough to make up for all the other serene nights I've had up until then because my nightmares are anything out of the ordinary. They have nothing to do with getting fired from an high end job, finding myself naked in public, being chased down by an evil shadow or even falling inside an endless pit. No, mine just so happen to be the most vivid things that you can possibly imagine, so much so that I swear I can even feel myself suffocating in my sleep sometimes.

You guys already learned that, for a brief moment in my life, I had once shut out those who were closest to me before. That during that period of my existence, all I had seen, slept and breathed was darkness. But what I failed to mention was that I hadn't had a nightmare like that ever since.

        Ace, on the other hand...let's just say that I had felt a different kind of pain when I saw him trembling that night...

~Flashback Continued~

~Thursday, January 26, 2017~

"Ace," I mumble, somehow coherently. "Dude, stop shoving me." I shift around, trying to drift back into my earlier peaceful state, but when he only gets closer -this time grabbing my waist and clinging me to his chest as if his life depends on it- I realize that he hasn't been shoving me at all.

He's been shaking and -now that I feel his wet chest against my bare back- sweating, too.

"Don't," I then hear him mumble, his grip on my waist tightening as he buries his face in the crook of my neck. "Lo," he breathes onto my suddenly cold skin, "baby, please don't go."

What the fuck?

Immediately turning around to get a better look at him, my heart nearly breaks when I see the extremely vulnerable state before me:

        Ace isn't just sweating, he's completely drenched. He's not shaking, he's fucking trembling. And the only words that leave his dry, parted lips afterwards are those of unintelligible thoughts that are currently rattling his brain as he experiences -what I hope will be- his first and last nightmare, especially in my presence. Because seeing him like this, so lost and broken in his own state of mind, is by far one of the worst kinds of pain I've ever known.

Sitting up and reaching over to turn on the lamp resting on his nightstand, I lower myself down to him, careful not to make things even worse by waking him up so abruptly. With a gentle hand on his soaked chest, steadying his unpredictable movements, my mouth finds his ear.

"Ace," I call out to him, hoping he hears me over the loud images that he's been battling against for God knows how long tonight. "Baby, wake up." When he steers underneath me again, my hand travels up to his neck, cupping it as I kiss his broad shoulder. "I'm right here," I let him know, remembering what he just mumbled. "I'm right here, baby. I'm not going anywhere, just please wake up."

It isn't until I go to kiss his cheek that Ace's eyes open wide, his throat coughing up a storm just like I had done every time I'd wake up from my own suffocating nightmares back when I had experienced the most dreadful period of my life.