Chapter Seven
ANA
Emotions were never something I was very good at. I tried to avoid them even more while in treatment. But I knew I had to face them. The problem was, I also had to function day in and day out, and after kissing Nate and screaming at him the night before, I knew I had to do something different. I had to figure out a way to get a hold of myself and my emotions. I felt so out of control. It really wasn’t Nate’s fault and I knew that; it was me and my emotions. I was going to work harder to have more control.
I had stayed up all night long trying to organize and control my environment. I took a shower, shaved my legs, made breakfast for Nate, which ended up being for Jordan and Chase as well. It helped my anxiety to stay so busy, but again, I knew I shouldn’t have stayed up all night long.
It was weird how I could tell something was wrong when I looked back at the moment, but I couldn’t tell in the moment at all. It wasn’t easy trying to adjust to normal life and I was going to have to learn some hard lessons along the way.
Nate was right, though: I wasn’t taking good care of myself and I knew it. After six months at the treatment facility, I was on my own and sucking at caring for myself. It was a simple thing that even a teenager could manage to do, yet I had been making a mess of it since I got out of treatment.
While at the treatment facility, I didn’t have to be in control of everything. They told me when to be in a group session, I had appointments and tasks, and there was always something for me to do. Although I clearly worked very hard while I was there, I didn’t have to make nearly as many decisions on a daily basis as I had already been making since being at Nate’s house.
“It’s going to be a girl?” I asked Jordan as she let me touch her stomach.
“Yes, and we have to show her what strong women look like.”
Jordan kept saying I was a strong woman. It baffled me that she thought that about me. I hadn’t been strong. I had jumped on a plane to see the first man who showed real interest in me. He turned out to be a horrible person and the torture I went through there wasn’t anything I wanted to relive. But I didn’t feel strong at all. I felt weaker than I had ever felt in my entire life.
Strong women weren’t able to be so easily swayed into a man’s arms. Jordan was a stronger woman than I had ever been. She made better decisions and had a clear head on her shoulders. If I could be more like her, then I would feel like a strong woman.
“I’m trying, Jordan. I really am. But I feel like my brain has been through a blender.”
“Why did you get so emotional when you heard that Nate was talking about going to Syria for his job?” Jordan asked out of the blue.
“I don’t know,” I lied to her.
The truth was I remembered my time in Syria even better than I remembered what had happened at Stephano’s house. I had been young when we were in Syria, but the smells and memories were still very strong. I remembered the fear on my mother’s face and the frantic way my father scooped us up and we all ran for safety one night. There were bombs and fires, all sorts of horrible things. It wasn’t a safe place, and I didn’t want Nate to go there.
“Do you want to stay here? Or would you rather come back to the house with us?” Jordan offered.
She was such a sweet friend. Even in her pregnancy and her time with her new husband she was willing to offer what she had to me. But I couldn’t take it. I wasn’t going to take away her special time with her new family.
The truth was it was better for me at Nate’s house. We were out in the middle of nowhere and I could actually relax. If I could stop throwing myself at the poor man, we could probably learn to get along well and not have any more outbursts toward each other.
“Absolutely not. I’m doing great here. I’ll listen to you all. I’ll sleep and eat and do all those boring things.”
We hugged and I felt the warmth in Jordan’s touch. She had a level of compassion for me that I wasn’t even sure I had for myself at that point. I was lucky to have her as a friend and lucky to have Nate and Chase around as well. Even though I was apparently sucking at the whole recovery thing, I wasn’t constantly shaking or hiding in the corner, so that felt like a little bit of a victory.
We finished our hugging and I said my goodbyes. Nate said his goodbyes to them as well and we both stood on the porch as they drove away. Suddenly, the absence of other people made the two of us feel uncomfortable around each other. We hadn’t exactly talked things out at all and there was the elephant in the room when the two of us were left alone.
I knew exactly why: it was that damn kiss. It had been a stupid mistake and I wished I could take it back. Nate was simply trying to help me out and I made it into some weird, romantic thing. No matter what I was feeling for him, it wasn’t the time or the place to go after a guy. I had to get better.
The truth was I wasn’t in a good place to even be worrying about chasing after a man. I had to work on myself and that was where I should have been concentrating all of my energy. No more focusing on Nate or anything outside of myself; I made a promise to really make more of an effort to get my own body and mind healthy before I started looking for any love and affection.
“Do you think you could teach me how to fight?” I asked.
The question seemed to surprise Nate and he looked at me with a raised eyebrow. I’m sure he had expected me to make some sort of comment about our kiss. Or even apologize for staying up all night and passing out. But he knew that I was sorry about all those things; I could tell in the way we looked at each other. I wasn’t going to dwell on it, and instead we were going to move forward.
“Sure. What kind of fighting do you want to learn?”
“All of it,” I joked. “I want to be able to kill a man with my bare hands.”
“Like self-defense skills?”
“No. I want to know how to hurt someone. I don’t want to wait for them to attack me. I want to know how to kill them if I see them in the street.”
I held my hands up into the air and pretended to strangle someone. I didn’t want to learn self-defense; I wanted to learn how to actually kill someone. The anger inside me was so great and the fear so overwhelming; the idea of learning the skills necessary to kill someone if they ever tried to hurt me, that felt powerful. I was ready to explain my reasoning to Nate as soon as he asked me, but he never did. He already seemed to understand exactly why I wanted to learn to fight.
“I’ve got two conditions to teaching you how to kill someone.”
“Okay.”
“You need to eat and sleep.”
I laughed at him. They were absolutely ridiculous conditions; of course I was going to eat and sleep. But then I thought about the last 48 hours and realized I hadn’t done either of those things. It was funny to me that he didn’t question my desire to learn such horrible skills, but I figured he probably knew lots of ways to kill a person, and maybe even had used them in the past.
“Deal.”
“Then we will start after you eat your lunch and take a nap,” Nate said as he walked back into the house.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
“Sure.”
“You’re going to take that job in Syria, aren’t you?”
He paused, and I saw him thinking about the question. He didn’t seem to really know if he wanted to take the job or not. But something told me that Nate wasn’t the kind of guy who said no to any task. Even if it was extremely dangerous.
“Probably.”
“If you show me the area you will be going to, I can see if I’m familiar with it at all,” I offered.
“Sure, the intel we get is really old most of the time. But I’ll let you have a look before I go.”
“When would you leave?”
“I’m not sure. I’d have to actually call the boss man and figure all of that out.”
“Why would you take a job like that, Nate? I mean, I don’t want to sound naïve; I’m sure it pays well. But you’re not hurting for money. Is it for the rush? Is it some sort of high you get from being in those dangerous places? I understand that. I really do. But isn’t there some other place you could go or some other job you could take?”
My words rambled on and I felt my sentences blending together as my thoughts just fell out of me. I wanted them to stop. I didn’t want to question his decisions. Who was I to do that? But I couldn’t stop thinking that he didn’t understand how dangerous Syria really was.
“There’s always other jobs, but I like mine. I have errands to run; I’ll see you after your nap.”
Nate clearly wasn’t interested in continuing our conversation as he made his way into his bedroom and shut the door. I heard him on the phone, but couldn’t quiet hear what he was saying.
I stood with my ear to the door, trying to make out the words. Not because I really needed to know his business, but because I wanted to know. I didn’t really understand Nate very well and I felled compelled to figure him out. It was probably just some sort of defense mechanism so I wouldn’t think about myself as much, but I continued listening at his door nonetheless.
“Two weeks sounds good. I’ve got a situation going on at home and that will give me some time to get it straightened out,” Nate said on the phone. “Talk to you then, thanks.”
I rushed into my room and tried to close the door as quietly as possible when I heard Nate walk toward his door. My adrenaline was pumping and I felt like a child about to get caught for doing something she wasn’t supposed to be doing.
“You better be in bed!” Nate hollered as he came out of his room. “I’m running to the store, do you need anything?”
“Um…no, I’m all right.”
“I’ll be back shortly. Take your nap.”
He said it in an authoritative way that normally I would have reacted to, but after the morning’s events, I was actually starting to feel pretty damn tired. I scarfed down the rest of the sandwich that was in my room and curled up under the covers. With Nate out of the house, it was extremely quiet, and as my eyes closed, I couldn’t help thinking that there was no way I could fall asleep alone in his house or with so much quiet going on around me.
***
It was dark when I finally woke up and I knew I had slept for a very long time. My body ached all over as I rolled to the side of the bed and started to climb out. Sleep hadn’t been my thing for a very long time. Even in the safety of the treatment facility, I hadn’t been able to get a really good night’s sleep. My muscles hurt, in a good way, as I opened the door and made my way out to the kitchen.
Nate was hard at work in the kitchen and I assumed he was making dinner. But I soon realized he was making breakfast, and as I looked at the clock, I saw that it was four o’clock in the morning. I had slept for over sixteen hours.
“Is it morning?” I asked just to verify my foggy brain was registering everything correctly.
“Well, I don’t know if I would call it morning exactly. But it is after midnight.”
Nate threw me a boyish smile that practically made me melt right there while I looked at him. He didn’t seem tired at all and was moving around the kitchen as if he had more energy than a small child.
“You got mad at me for not sleeping, but here you are, up all night.”
“I slept. I went to bed early and just woke up a little bit ago. Six hours is about all I can stay down for. But you, you’re like a professional sleeper now.”
I felt like a professional sleeper. My body really didn’t know what to do with all that sleep.
“Very funny. I can’t believe I actually slept that long.”
“It’s good for you. How are you feeling?” he asked as he looked down at my hands.
“Stop worrying about me so much. I hate when people fuss over me. You know the best thing you can do for me is treat me just like any other woman.”
“Get out then,” Nate said.
I froze and looked up at him. My heart sank and I couldn’t figure out what the hell was going on.
“What?”
“Girls I know don’t usually spend the night,” he teased with a wide grin.
“Well, aren’t you just the jokester tonight—I mean, today.”
I took a seat at the barstool and watched Nate whip the French toast mixture and then put some bread into it and onto the stove. He seemed very familiar with the process, and I was impressed.
My eyes locked onto his biceps as he whipped the liquid around with ease. Nate was such a well-built man. I couldn’t remember ever being in the close company of a man who was so into his fitness routine. It was intriguing to watch his body move and each of the muscles flex and relax as he completed tasks.
“Do you have, like, zero percent body fat?” I blurted out.
“Ha, no. I’ve got plenty of body fat. I’ve got to keep warm at night,” Nate lifted up his shirt to show me what he thought was some body fat. All I could see were some amazing abs.
Most of the men I had been around in my life weren’t all that fit, so it was fascinating to me to watch Nate’s body as it moved. Everything was covered in muscles and perfectly shaped. I thought people like that only existed in the movies. But it was exciting to see a man like Nate up close and personal.
“Yep, you’re a fat pig. I think you shouldn’t eat any of this breakfast and give it all to me.”
He grabbed a plate of the French toast and walked over to where I was sitting. My heart raced as I looked up at him and felt the energy from his body. Again, I felt the unstoppable urge to touch him. I couldn’t help it. Everything in my body was screaming at me to reach out and touch him, but this time I tried to do it more appropriately as I laid my hand over his and took the plate from him.
Nate felt it too. I saw it flash across his eyes as he looked down at me. He looked like there was a moment when he was going to move in and kiss me. I prepared myself, but he quickly took a step back.
The sexual tension between the two of us was unstoppable. Even when we both tried to keep things friendly, our bodies wanted something so much more to happen between us. I knew I wasn’t going to let things go any further, but a little fantasy about Nate shouldn’t hurt anything.
“You’re going to love these. They are my special recipe,” he said light-heartedly as he went back to the stove.
His back was toward me, and I couldn’t help but smile. It was the first time any man had made me breakfast. Or at least that I could remember—there had been a few foggy mornings when I was younger.
“So, when are we going to start this training of mine? I’d like to learn some skills before you leave for your job.”
I had decided to stop busting his chops about him going to Syria. Nate was obviously the kind of guy who could protect himself, and for whatever reason, he wanted to take the job and I was no one in his life and needed to just keep quiet about it.
“After breakfast if you’re up to it. We can start with a little cardio.”
“I haven’t worked out for more than a year; you’ll have to take it easy on me.”
When I was younger, I liked running for exercise, but I had gotten out of that habit for a few years and wasn’t really sure I could manage much more than a jog.
“Taking it easy doesn’t make a killer,” Nate said.
That damn grin of his flashed over his shoulder at me, and I broke into a huge smile myself. I wanted to be a killer. Not that I wanted to be a person who went out and just killed random people, but I wanted to learn the skills necessary to kill someone if I had to. If I had that power and knew I had it, I was convinced I would be more able to take on the world.
“Wow, you really should do that more often.”
“What?”
“That smile. Damn, you must have been a real heart breaker in your day,” I said to Nate.
“Hey! I’m not that old. I can still be a heartbreaker,” he said as he tossed me a smile again. “But you should smile more often also. You could knock a guy off his chair with that grin of yours.”
But Nate was right: I hadn’t really smiled much in a very long time. It felt good to feel carefree for that moment. It felt like I was myself again, even if only for a few seconds of time. Then I heard something moving outside the window and dropped my fork as I swung around in my chair in utter terror.
The noise wasn’t particularly scary, so I didn’t know why I had done that. But after turning around, I saw out the window that there were two squirrels running around a tree, certainly nothing to be fearful of.
“That will calm down, you know, the reaction to things like that,” Nate said. “You’re lucky it wasn’t one of the crazy raccoons that live out here. They will jump right up on the porch and go through all my things like they own the place.”
“What?” I asked as I turned back toward my plate.
“The hyper vigilance. You’ll learn to calm down again, I promise.”
His words felt like they were coming from someone who really understood what I was going through. I trusted him. I didn’t know him, but I trusted Nate very much. If he said the constant fear I was feeling was going to calm down, I couldn’t wait to prove him right. It was exhausting to always feel like someone was coming to murder you.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Of course, anything,” Nate said as he turned toward me.
“Do you think Stephano and his men are looking for me?”
My question caught him off guard, and I knew he wasn’t going to answer me even if he knew the answer. Especially after seeing me freak out over the last few days, Nate wasn’t about to do anything that would add more fear into my life. I appreciated that very much, but I did want to know if I was still in danger.
“I honestly don’t know. I thought he died that night, but we don’t really have proof of that.”
“If he is alive, he’s going to want me dead, isn’t he?”
Nate thought for a long time before he answered me. His eyes looked serious and he made a point to look deep into my eyes as he talked, and then he winked at me.
“Well, that would be damn stupid of him, since we’re going to teach you how to kill a man.”
I had to laugh at the notion that I would actually be strong enough to kill a man. I couldn’t imagine I would ever feel strong again at all. But having Nate around and believing in me did give me hope that I would be able to work toward something stronger in my future. And who knows? Maybe someday I would feel like I was powerful and in control again.