Sweet darkness wrapped around me. I turned my cheek into the pillow and pulled the blankets up tighter around me. This was the best part of any morning: those few moments right before you fully woke up, right before thoughts of the day snuck in.

Paige squirmed next to me and kicked my leg. I edged over towards the side of the bed to get out of her way.

The bed began shaking.

“Wh-what?” I groggily asked, sitting up and reaching for the table lamp.

A high, piercing scream filled the room at the same moment light flooded it.

“Paige!”

She bolted upright, gasping for air.

I grabbed her shoulders. “Paige! Are you awake?”

Her wide eyes stared at me, but whether they really saw me or not was a mystery.

“Do you need your inhaler?” I asked.

“My… my...” She looked around the bed in confusion, and then she shook her head.

“All right.” I relaxed my hold on her shoulders. “Are you okay?”

“I...” Her bottom lip trembled. “My parents. I saw them.”

I smoothed down her hair. “It was just a dream. It’s fine now.”

Her eyes still frantically scanned the room. A shiver ran down my back.

“Lay down,” I said, half because I needed to appease myself. “Come here.”

She let me put my arm around her shoulders and bring her back down into the pillows to nuzzle against my chest.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“No,” she whispered.

“Okay,” I soothingly said, rubbing her shoulder. I could make a pretty educated guess on the content of the dream. “Let’s go back to sleep.”

Gray light poked in through the space between the curtains, making it way too early an hour to be up during a vacation.

“I can’t,” she woefully said.

“Okay.” I wrapped both arms around her and held her so tight I thought she might tell me to stop. Instead she locked one arm across my chest and turned herself to face into me.

“It’s the same dream I always have,” she softly whispered.

I gritted my teeth. She woke from bad dreams every once in a while, but the way she talked suggested the nightmares were more common that I thought.

I carefully selected my words. “Maybe it’s time you thought about going back to therapy.”

She tensed a bit. “No.”

I bit back a curse. At this point her resistance to getting professional help bordered on childish. “I really think it’s time Paige.”

Paige pulled away and sat up, long streams of hair falling around her face. “I went to therapy. I spent years there. And I saw, like, three different therapists. There’s nothing else it can do for me, Angelo?”

I sat up as well, bringing my knees up and resting my arms on them. “But you might as well try. How can that hurt? As long as there’s a small chance that you might get healthier, why not take it?”

She looked down. “Because it’s exhausting. Going through that… is exhausting.”

“And living with anxiety and nightmares isn’t?”

She didn’t answer.

“Look...”

“If it doesn’t work, I’ll keep having these dreams and will eventually have to talk about them!” Her head snapped back up and she glared at me.

I silently counted to ten. I wasn’t angry at Paige, but I was furious over her willingness to be so complacent.

“The way you put it,” I slowly said, “Does make it sound awful. But most people find talking about traumas to be beneficial.”

She crossed her arms. “You’re not a professional.”

“So go see one,” I shot back. “And at least get an initial consultation. What about that?”

She eyed me.

“I’m not the enemy,” I reminded her.

Her arms fell down and her shoulders hunched over. “God, I know. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m being so mean to you.”

I rubbed her arm. “I think I know.”

“Yeah?”

“The idea of therapy can be scary. You might go there and discover more things trapped inside of you. Things you didn’t know about. Feelings… Memories...”

Her lips twisted and she looked away again, a sure sign I’d hit the nail on the head.

I took Paige’s hand in mine “But a therapist is trained to face those things. They’ll be able to guide you through anything that might come up.” I tightened my fingers around hers. “And I’ll be here as well. I would even go with you to therapy if you wanted. Or I could sit in the waiting room. Or I could not go and all. I could stay at home and when you get back we can talk about it. Or not. It’s all up to you, Paige. Just take care of your health. I love you. I can’t see you in pain like this.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Okay,” she said with a nod and a few sniffles. “I’ll do it.”

The words hardly seemed real. “Thank you.” I wrapped her up in a hug.

“When we get back I’ll find someone,” she said.

“Good.” I pulled away and wiped the one tear off her cheek. “Hey,” I softly said. “It’s Christmas Eve. How do you feel?”

She smiled a tiny bit. “Better now.”

“What can I do to make you feel great?”

She cocked her head and looked up at me through those long, dark lashes. “Just be you. You do a badass job at that already so there shouldn’t be any problem.”

I lightly pinched her cheek. “How about snowman and reindeer shaped pancakes?”

This time a real smile lit up her face. “For real?”

“Mariel makes them every year.”

“Too bad we don’t have any real snow to go along with them.”

“Christmas isn’t over yet.” I pulled her back to me and kissed her long and deep.

Banging on the door interrupted the embrace. “Wake up bro!” Franco yelled. “Look outside.”

His footsteps faded away, likely headed towards the kitchen and those pancakes.

Paige’s face scrunched in a question. “Really?”

“Let’s go see.”

Taking her hand, I pulled her from the bed and to the window. Sure enough, the scene outside was just as we expected. A thin blanket of snow covered the ground, the best part being the thick snowflakes still wafting down.

I wrapped my arms around Paige. “Well what do you know?”