“I love you,” I say softly, thinking that even if he can’t give me the words back, he might need to hear them right now.

“Oh, Lia.” He inhales loudly, shaking for just a moment before pulling away. “I’m going to work in my office for a few hours until I key down. Try to get some sleep and I’ll be back later.” I almost offer to go with him, but I know he doesn’t want that. He needs time alone to sort through the ghosts raging in his head. I’ve been there before, and I understand the urge to run away from it all.

“Okay.” I give him a smile of understanding and let him walk away to deal with his demons. Fighting the things you can’t see or touch are sometimes the battles that wound you the most.

Lucian

I drop my head in my hands as I make it to the sanctuary of my office. My heart is still racing from the dream that seemed so horribly real. I’ve had nightmares for years… since the night Cassie tried to kill me. Tonight, though, it was different. Cassie and Lia had intertwined in the dream, taking even my subconscious by surprise. Before I awoke, Cassie had been stabbing Lia, yelling that I was hers. It had been so fucking real that I was choking on my own bile as I bolted from the bed.

Would I ever be able to get past what happened all those years ago? Just when I think there is a chance of moving on, I’m hit with this. I’m tired of the fucking dreams, and I’m even more tired of worrying about them happening. The stress of it all coupled with my fears for Lia are eating me alive. I don’t even hesitate as I unlock my desk drawer and pull the small bag from inside. If not this, then I’d be walking the floors for hours, trying to get back to level ground. I need it and the sweet oblivion that only it will bring.

Lia thought that talking to her about what had happened could make it better. But how can you tell someone that your pregnant girlfriend had been so twisted that she had literally tried to slit your throat and let you bleed out, while you were inside her? That she had continued to move against you even as she stabbed herself while laughing. The sound of her crazy, fucking cackles would forever haunt me. Maybe even more so because I know deep down that she was paying me back for what I did.

With a shaking hand, I make a less-than-perfect line and take the rolled-up bill to snort it. I’m in the middle of doing the white line when I hear a noise and look up. I freeze in horror as Lia looks at me in shock. I know there is no mistaking what she’s seeing. Maybe…just maybe, if there hadn’t been any cocaine remaining on the mirror in front of me or if the damned rolled bill wasn’t still hovering under my nose, I could explain it away. I wait for her to speak, though, just on the outside chance that she has a different take on what I’m doing.

She drops into a chair in the front of my desk, and I quickly put my drug paraphernalia back in my desk drawer. I have never felt like less of a man than I do right now. To be caught doing something like this because I can’t cope, by the strongest woman I’ve ever known, is humiliating. For the first time since we met, I feel like a complete disappointment to her. The silence in the room is deafening as we both wait for the other to speak. Finally, she says, “I never knew. How long?”

Not bothering to lie, I tell her the truth. “On and off for years.” I don’t add ‘since Cassie’. I know it’s not an excuse. There is never an acceptable reason for using coke.

She looks more curious than anything else when she asks, “Do you even want to stop?”

“Not enough to really try…until you. I never wanted you to know.” When she stands, I think she is walking away in disgust. I’m astonished when she walks toward me instead and pulls my chair back enough to crawl into it with me. She sits sideways in my lap as if seeking comfort. I automatically close my arms around her, breathing in her familiar scent.

“Am I doing this to you, Luc?”

“What?” I take her chin in my hand, bringing her eyes to mine. “No, baby, God no. I’m not proud of it, but as I said, I’ve been using for much longer than I’ve known you. Sometimes weeks pass in between…and sometimes they don’t.”

She puts her small hand over mine, continuing to study me as if she can see into my very soul; sometimes I believe she can. “The dreams seem like they are getting worse. You had stopped having them before my attack.”

“They hadn’t stopped. You knew I was taking something to help me sleep.” When she nods, I continue. “It wasn’t working that great, and I had a few that didn’t wake you. Therefore, I did the only thing I knew would keep them at bay. I couldn’t risk hurting you again, baby.” I know it sounds like an excuse, even to my ears, but I would and will do everything I need to do to keep her safe, even if it’s from me.

“We’ve been quietly falling apart,” she says softly as she threads her fingers between mine. I panic for a moment, not understanding what she means.

“We’re fine, Lia. Nothing is going to tear us apart. We are always going to be stronger together.”

“That’s not what I meant, Luc. I’m not talking about our relationship coming apart. We are unraveling inside. Our past is festering within each of us, eating away who we are, bit by bit. I’ve been wallowing in self-pity since my attack, and I can’t seem to stop. Everyone tells me I’m so lucky. I’m alive and I wasn’t raped. I’m a survivor. I lived to tell the tale. What they don’t seem to understand, though, is that those words describe my life, not just one incident. I keep getting up, brushing myself off, and trying to move forward. I’m the fucking queen of making lemonade out of lemons, Luc. But each time, I keep wondering what’s going to happen to me when I finally just don’t get up. Was I doomed to be just a sad statistic from the moment I was born?”

Her gut-wrenching words hit me hard. In our time together and all of our conversations, this is the most defeated I’ve ever heard her sound. As strong as she is, she can’t save me and I can’t save her as the damaged man I am. If I wanted to continue on the self-destructive path I’ve been on, I should have walked away from her in the beginning. Now, it’s too late. She is the very air I breathe, and even if I cannot say the words, I acknowledge to myself for the first time that I am hopelessly in love with her. Maybe if we had each lived normal lives with no past traumas, our draw toward each other wouldn’t have been as strong. In an alternative life, she would have grown up as Lee Jacks’ daughter with a wealth to match or exceed my own. Would any of that have made a difference to either of us the first time we looked into each other’s eyes? I have to believe that my soul would have still recognized hers, no matter what our circumstances were at the time of our paths crossing.