Piece Us Together (Monstrous Survivors #3)

20. Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty

Hunter

I’ve always been a light sleeper when I have a sub around. It’s like my body knows it could be needed at any second. The ability has come in handy more than once, just like my ability to shake sleep off from one blink to the next. It comes in handy tonight as I jerk awake to a sound. Not quite a cry or a scream. Just agony given a voice. Something awful and heart-wrenching.

My view of the source of those sounds is obstructed by Nolan, the boy sitting up with his knees pulled to his chest, his arms wrapped around them. He peers at me in the moonlight. He doesn’t bother to fake a smile. “We can’t wake him.”

I nod, trusting his word.

“He warned me before, about not touching him while he’s sleeping.” I shift on the bed, moving myself closer to Maison while nudging Nolan farther away. He leans his head on my shoulder with a sad sigh. The moonlight perfectly falls across Maison’s body. His shirt is bunched halfway up his torso, and his dog tags have made their way outside of their shirt prison in the night to lie on his heaving chest. His hands are fisting the sheets so hard they’re shaking with the exertion.

“A nightmare,” Nolan mumbles in case I couldn’t tell.

“Does he have them often?”

“They’ve been getting better.” It’s not an answer, but it’s more information than the two of them usually share. It wasn’t long ago at all that I was happy to have the scraps from them, but it’s starting to hurt in a way that’s hard to ignore. “They’re usually a sign he’s struggling. I—I didn’t think he was, recently. I mean, I knew he was a little, with…you know.” Us, he doesn’t say . With us , with this. “But maybe it’s worse than I thought…”

I don’t want to fall in love with you.

Can you make it stop?

Because I’m bad?

“What else has he been struggling with?”

Nolan looks away, back at Maison. His voice wavers when he admits, “ Everything .”

Maison makes another of those agonized sounds before whispering something I can’t quite make out. I glance at Nolan, his chin wobbling. “Almost done,” he says without looking away from the man.

“How do you know?”

“It’s usually over after he says sorry.”

That’s what Maison is saying, now that Nolan gave me something to listen for. He’s whispering he’s sorry, over and over, desperate and devastated.

Who is he saying sorry to? What’s happening to him in his mind? Isn’t there anything we can do to save him from it?

I see him in that alley outside the pub. I see him outside in my driveway. I see him on the back porch of his home.

I’m a bad person.

I hurt people.

I don’t want to fall in love with you.

“Do you think this is hurting him?” Nolan whispers. He’s looking at me again, his eyes wide with fear. “Us, I mean? This… arrangement? ”

I try to find the right words to explain what I think without throwing Maison completely under the bus. It’s not my place to tell him the things Maison has said to me, but I can’t lie either.

I settle for a vague middle-ground. “I think he’s making it hurt him. I think it’s going to be up to him to make it stop.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.” He draws his knees back up, a tear falling down his cheek. “He’s very good at making himself hurt, Hunter.”

“That doesn’t surprise me, unfortunately.”

“Sometimes…” He stops, shaking his head.

I place a hand on his back and begin to rub comforting circles there. He presses into the touch, his eyes closing.

“Sometimes what, Nolan?”

“Sometimes I wish you could just tell him to stop. I wish he’d let you. I think he needs you, not like I do, but—but like I do.” He laughs, the sound shaky and self-conscious. “I know that doesn’t make sense.”

“It does, actually.”

He wipes his tears away, nodding slowly. “I just—I wish he’d let go of the weight of the world, you know? He has this—he has a tattoo. You can see part of it.” I look down. Sure enough, the way his shirt is bunched exposes a cluster of dark ink on his side. It’s meaningless between the darkness of the room and the rest of it being invisible.

“It’s of Atlas,” he tells me. “From Greek mythology.”

“The man forced to carry the weight of the world?”

“Yeah.” He sniffles. “He didn’t have a choice, you know? Atlas. But Maison does . I just—I wish you could take it away from him. He won’t drop it himself. I’m scared it’ll crush him one day, Hunter.”

It’s the first time he’s called me by my name since we agreed on him being my sub whenever he walks in the door. I know it’s not misbehavior. Even if I wasn’t already sure he’s too good of a boy for that, I can see it in his eyes. It’s because he’s deadly serious. He is scared and he wants me to help and we both know I can’t until Maison lets me.

I don’t want to fall in love with you.

Can you make it stop?

Does it scare you?

Is it because I’m bad?

“I’m a patient man, Nolan. I’ll be here when he’s ready.”

He doesn’t point out that Maison might never be ready. Neither do I.

We don’t want to think about the kind of ending that would be for any of us.