Page 101 of The Wrong Man

Dylan is not healed. Dylan is not recovered. Dylan is standing in my bathroom having a complete psychological breakdown because my shitty plumbing triggered a flashback to the worst experience of his life.

An experience I gave him. Deliberately. Methodically. With all the skill and precision I have honed over decades of making people suffer.

“Dylan.” My voice comes out hoarse. Wrecked. “Dylan, it’s me. It’s Dante. You are safe.”

He doesn’t respond. His eyes are still fixed on the shower, still glazed with that terrible faraway look. His chest is heaving with rapid, shallow breaths. His whole body is trembling, and I cannot tell if it is from cold or fear or both.

I take a step toward him.

He flinches. Violently. His whole body jerks away from me, pressing harder into the corner, and a sound escapes him that is barely human.

“No.” The word is raw, broken. “No, please. Please, I told you everything. I don’t know anything else. Please.”

He is not talking to me. He is talking to the monster who tortured him. The fact that we are the same person is a knife twisting in my heart.

“Dylan.” I try to keep my voice calm. Gentle. Everything I am not built to be. “Dylan, you’re not in the studio. You are in my flat. The water turned cold because of the pipes. That is all. You are safe.”

His eyes flicker toward me. For a moment, I think he sees me. Really sees me, here and now, not the nightmare version of me that lives in his memories.

Then his gaze slides past me to the broken door, the shattered frame, the evidence of violence that I have just committed to get to him. And whatever brief clarity he found vanishes.

“Stay away from me.”

The words are steadier now. More present. But they are filled with a fear that cuts me to the bone.

He is afraid of me. Genuinely, viscerally afraid. Not the low-level wariness that has faded over the past days. Not the careful tension that has slowly been replaced by something softer. This is the raw, animal terror of prey confronted by a predator.

I did this. I made him this way. And no amount of cookbooks or lovemaking or gentle mornings will ever undo it.

How do you help someone with their trauma when you are the one who caused it?

The answer is simple. Devastating. Obvious.

You cannot.

I take a step back. Then another. Putting distance between us, giving him space, even though every instinct is screaming at me to go to him, to wrap him in my arms, to hold him until the shaking stops.

But my arms are the arms that hurt him. My hands are the hands that wielded the tools he still sees in his nightmares. My presence is not comfort. My presence is the trigger.

I turn away from him. There is a stack of towels on the shelf by the sink. I grab two of them, thick and soft, the expensive kind I bought without really knowing why. There is also a blanket folded on the rack, left over from a bout of flu last winter when I spent days shivering in bed.

I place them on the floor. Within his reach, but far enough away that he will not have to come close to me to get them.

“Towels,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “And a blanket. For when you are ready.”

He doesn’t respond. Doesn’t move. Just stares at me with those haunted eyes, his body still pressed into the corner like he is trying to melt through the wall and escape.

I should say something else. Something reassuring. Something that might help.

But what is there to say? I’m sorry I tortured you. I’m sorry I broke you. I’m sorry that even now, even after everything, I am still the source of your suffering.

No words can fix this. No apology can undo the damage I have done.

So I do the only thing I can do. The only thing that might help, even a little.

I leave.

I step out of the bathroom and pull what remains of the door closed behind me. It doesn’t latch properly anymore. Of course it doesn’t. I destroyed it in my haste to reach him, adding one more broken thing to the list of damage I have caused.