The Veil

Chapter Twenty

I woke up choking on my own scream.

I managed to keep it in, my fist flying to my mouth to bite down on.

I sucked in a huge breath, trying to control myself.

"Lil?" Tom's voice was quiet and confused.

His head was on my stomach, his legs tangled with mine, arms wrapped tightly round my waist.

I let out the breath I was holding in and shakily whispered "Sorry I woke you." My fist dropped form my mouth and I ran my fingers through his shaggy hair.

"Are you ok?" He sleepily asked, barely awake.

"I'm ok, go back to sleep." I whispered, my breathing almost returned to normal.

The comfort of having Tom's body wrapped around mine, so protectively, helped chase the nightmare away.

I really needed to speak to Dr Shumur, the dreams were getting terrifying, the strange things happening around me, the nose bleed the other day, I was starting to get headaches too.

Why had these dreams started to get so frequent and aways focused around my parents deaths?

I'd gone years with just the occasional nightmare about them, reminding me of the sharp pain that came along with the memory, but it was like my brain was determined to keep me in a constant state of hurt.

Tom had started to eased the hurt and the pain daily, but the buffering effect he had been having seemed to be wearing off, like my body was becoming accustomed to his heavy breathing and soft mumblings next to me as we slept, bringing with it an immunity effect.

I sighed sadly, the sting of what happened all those years ago hurting my chest. Even though it wasn't exactly like the dream, rather than follow an instinct outside to find my parents choking on their own blood, I'd sat for hours, waiting and worrying until finally I'd gone over to the Armstrong's to be told my parents had died.

I managed to get back to sleep half an hour after I'd woken up, but all too soon Tom's alarm was jolting me awake again.

"Fuck" He groaned, unwrapping an arm from around my waist and reaching for his phone, swiping the alarm off and dropping the phone onto the bed next to us.

"Morning." I smiled down at him, my hand wrapping in his hair like it had earlier that morning.

"Too early." He sighed, kissing my bare stomach.

The simple soft touch sent fire raging through me for a second.

"What time do you have to go to work?" I yawned.

"Ten, what about you?" He still hadn't opened his eyes. His features so soft and unguarded.

"Eleven. Why'd you set your alarm for so early?" I questioned, his clock on the wall above his TV said it was seven.

"Forgot to change it from yestreday." He groaned, "Wake me in an hour." He said before almost instantly falling back to sleep.

I kept my hand running through his hair slowly and softly.

I grabbed my phone with my other hand and started to scroll through facebook.

My feed was pretty dead, most of my friends were just people in town, I still had a few friends on there from the city, but we didn't keep in contact, I'd occasionally like a picture from them or a funny video they shared but that was as far as our communication went.

I'd never really had a chance to make any real friends in college, living off campus with Sky isolated me from making those life long friends in the dorms like most students there.