Page 11 of Take Me Big Boy
The military taught me discipline, and despite poking at her on her first days, I’m a man who has mastered restraint. Penny barks at the back door, and I let her out into the fenced yard without thinking about it, the way I’d let out my own dog. I make extra coffee in the morning because Ashley likes it sweet and pale. I keep treats in the jar topped up for the greyhound. None of this was a decision. It just started happening.
She threatens me, threatens the solitude I’ve carved out for myself. Every time those stunning forest-green eyes lift to mine, they threaten to strip me and wreck the defenses I’ve worked hard to build for years.
And today, more than ever, I can’t have her around me. Not when my walls are so weak and battered after the storm that was my nightmare. More often than I want, the memories of that day flood in with such brutality that they threaten to undo me, and last night was especially brutal.
I can’t have Ashley around me when I’m this frayed.
Not when it feels like there is a hammer inside my skull. The painkillers I shot down barely grazed the surface of the headache. I consider taking another but decide against it, figuring I might as well give caffeine a shot.
The kitchen light drills into my skull and sends a fresh stab of pain when I stumble in. I shuffle toward the machine and grab a cup. My vision blurs for a second, and I consider adding a few shots of whiskey to my coffee, but I don’t like the idea of playing Russian roulette with different drugs and hoping one does the job.
The coffee will just have to do.
The aroma of the brewing coffee offers a small comfort, so I lean back and watch the dark liquid drip into the pot in a slow, agonizing process. My left shoulder pulses with every heartbeat. The exercises Ashley put me through yesterday left the muscle aching in a way that feels productive—like work, not damage—but right now, with the headache and the nightmare hangover, every part of me hurts.
My stomach churns, and every muscle in my body aches. I watch the coffee, refusing to let my mind wander back to the nightmare and the horrors that played in it.
I can’t think about their voices or their faces right before our world exploded. The phone calls I made from my hospital bed once I could hold a phone steady. The silence on the other end of the line when Henry’s daughter answered. The way Jefferson’s girl asked, before I could even speak, if he’d suffered.
“Why them?”The question they’d always ask, followed by the silence hiding the question they wouldn’t,“Why not you?”
And I don’t have one goddamned answer for that. I didn’t have it for the men in my dreams, nor their living families. I don’t have it for myself.
“Matt?”
My head shoots up at the voice, and I realize it’s coming from the front of the house. Ashley. Fuck, I didn’t hear her drive up. I always hear her car when she approaches, but not today. Too lost in my head to notice that my coffee is ready, too. I turn away from it and walk to the front door, surprised to find Ashley standing alone.
“My grandparents took Penny to the vet today,” she explains.
Something in my chest dips. I’ve spent the past week pretending I haven’t been looking forward to that copper streak shooting past Ashley’s legs every morning, the click of her nails on my hardwood, the way she trots straight to the workout room and curls up on the bed I put there for her.
Penny has a way of standing too close. Bony shoulder against my thigh while Ashley lays out her notebook, like the spot belongs to her now and she’s just confirming it’s still there. The first time she did it, I stood like a dumbass with my hand frozen over her head because the muscle memory was there. But the dog was new, and the two didn’t fit together yet. She didn’t seem to notice or care. She just stayed until I remembered how to breathe and how to scratch behind a dog’s ear. She’s done it every morning since.
Today, it’s just Ashley. And the headache. And the silence.
“You should probably take a day off too,” I tell her, blocking the door. “Go home, Ashley.”
“Really, you’re doing this again?” She frowns, and I watch her eyes track over my face—the dark circles, the unshaven jaw, whatever else she’s reading there. “I thought we were past it. I’m not going to quit, Matt. Not until your brother fires me.”
“I want you to leave!” The words come out lower than I mean them to, more tired than angry.
“If you want a day off, all you have to do is ask. I’ll write you down instructions on what to do—”
“Fine, I’m asking. Now leave.”
Hurt crosses her expression for a brief second before it’s quickly replaced by concern. “Something’s wrong,” she says, her brows furrowing. “What’s wrong?”
I can’t understand why I don’t simply walk back inside and slam the door shut. The truth is the same reason I made extra coffee this morning. I don’t want her gone. I want her here. And the wanting is precisely what scares me on a day when I can’t trust myself to be steady.
“Ashley—”
“Please, tell me,” she whispers, undoing me.
Goddamn it.
“Look,” I say, my tone gentler. “Why don’t you take a day off, and we’ll continue with the sessions tomorrow?”
She doesn’t speak a word and, for several seconds, stands silently watching me. “It’s your head,” she finally says. “You have a headache.”
