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They had been fighting already. The reason why now lost somewhere in the middle of the spat. It was nothing significant just a couples’ quarrel until Lucy’s question. The argumentative words tumbling out of Tim’s mouth came to a sudden halt. His mind and thoughts short-circuiting as her question finally registered. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He just looked at her from across the living room.
Lucy asked her question again and it hit Tim harder than before. “Do you even love me anymore?”
Tim hesitated, why he was not sure, but the question had caught him off guard. Of course, he loved her. He would always love her. He could never love another woman. The last few months had been hard for several different reasons creating a strain on their relationship. Maybe he had not been attentive enough and missed something or maybe he was just blind to it. “What,” he asked finally, barely spitting out the one-syllable word.
The way her eyes filled with sadness as she looked at him from across the living room plowed through him like an eighteen-wheeler. She shook her head slowly, tears pooling in her eyes. A sniffle escaped her as she turned away from him. The bedroom door closed softly behind her, leaving Tim alone to brew in his thoughts.
He knew that he should have gone after her. Give her no doubt of his love for her, but he could not make himself move. Her question had rocked him, took his breath away, and broke his heart. He could not help but wonder what he had done to make her think that his love had faded.
As Tim slept on the couch that night, he could hear Lucy’s soft cries until they faded away as sleep overcame her. It hurt him worse than any bullet he took, but he stayed there. He stayed away. Tried to give them some time apart where they could calm down and collect their heads.
Then they were avoiding each other. Tim woke up first and left the house headed to the station to bury himself in paperwork. It was rollcall before he saw Lucy. She wore no makeup; he could see the redness still in her eyes. Yet she was still beautiful to him, she always would be. After the meeting, she was running out of the room. His eyes tracked her until she turned the corner and disappeared. That became their unfortunate routine.
It was Angela that noticed first. She had asked Lucy, but the woman shut down again scurrying away from the situation as soon as she could. When she cornered Tim in his office about it, the man was tight-lipped, not wanting to let anything slip. When she invited them to dinner with her and Wesley, Tim was quick to refuse. They were not in a place to go on a double date with their friends as they had done before. Angela was persistent, however, not giving up until she had the answer she wanted.
Everything was getting better, close to good even until it wasn’t. The ugly green-eyed monster on his shoulder roared its ugly head. The waiter, a man about Lucy’s age, took a liking to their table, but more importantly to Lucy. He made sure to compliment the outfit she wore, called her cute little pet names, and once his hand lingered on hers a little too long when she handed him her glass for a refill.
Tim was smoldering the whole ride home. Typically, he was not the jealous type. Lucy was beautiful. Men hit on her all the time, and it never really bothered him before. Now thanks to the state of their relationship, he was brimming with jealousy.
“He was hitting on you, right in front of me, and you seemed to enjoy it,” Tim complained as they got ready for bed. Lucy stopped pulling the comforter back to look up at Tim. At first, he paid her no attention continuing to fix his side of the bed. Only when he noticed that she had stopped did he peak up at her. “What?”
Lucy shook her head looking back down at the bed. She stayed silent, giving the comforter one last messy fling before climbing on the mattress. She flipped around trying to make herself comfortable, her back towards Tim.
After a few moments of him staring at her back, Tim made a move to climb into bed himself. He stayed away from her like he did every night for the last three weeks. He had just situated himself under the comforter, facing the wall when he felt her shift. The click of her bedside lamp seemed to echo through the room as it turned dark. The space between them felt more like a minefield than the cold valley it was.
Hours had passed since they had laid down. The distance between them feeling more like a mile instead of the few feet separating them. Lucy had been asleep after a while. Tim could always tell when she finally let herself give in to the pull of sleep because her body relaxed, her breathing leveled out, and she didn’t move. He would lay there for hours unable to make himself join her in that sweet peacefulness.
Three weeks ago, they had had the biggest fight in their whole relationship. Looking back at it now, the whole reason for the argument was absurd and pointless, stupid even. It felt like there was a stranger in the house. Their words were short. Looks even shorter. Lucy drove herself to work unable to be in the same confined space as him for the forty-minute round trip from the house to the station. At work, they communicated when they had to. Tim being the patrol sergeant was still her superior, but he still tried to keep his distance. Then they would come home, to the cold and dark house. Lucy would sit on one end of the couch and he on the other. Both of them were suffering.
It was now in the wee hours of the morning, a jerk and whimper across from him pulled Tim out of the light sleep that he had fallen into. He laid there in the darkness; his eyes open waiting for the sound to come again. The whimpers turned into whines. The whines escalated to screams before he had time to process. The woman that slept behind him no longer still as she flailed under the covers.
He flipped over quickly only to find Lucy in the middle of a full-blown nightmare. Her legs kicked under the covers as if she was trying to run away. Her arms pushed up from under the covers. It had been years since she last had a nightmare and to this day the sight of her struggles still threatened to send his heart into pieces.
His body was on autopilot as he reached for her moving across the bed. His arms wrapped around her tightly pinning her arms to her side as he brought her taunt body against his. “It’s okay, Luce. You’re okay. I’m right here,” he said into her ear trying to pull her out of sleep and away from the haunting dream. “You’re okay. You’re safe, Luce.” His words went unheard as Lucy continued to struggle against him as he held her tight in his arms just like he had done several before.
“Lucy, come on baby. Listen to my voice. You’re okay. You’re safe. It’s Tim, sweetheart,” he continued to whisper in her ear. A few minutes and several more of Tim’s soft reassurances in her ear did Lucy finally start to calm down. Her breathes evened out, her heartbeat slowly gradually returning to normal. “You’re okay. You’re safe, Luce. You’re safe.”
They laid there for a while in silence pressed against each other for the first time in weeks. He knew that she was awake. She always woke up eventually. Back then, she would face him. Her face buried in the crook of his neck as she came back to herself. He would cradle her against him, his hand tangled in her brown hair as he whispered reassuring statements in her ear. Now, she stayed facing away from him. His arms loosened but they stayed around her. It almost felt normal. Almost like they had woken up from this nightmare they were living in.
Lucy was the first to move. Instead of moving closer, she moved away. Her hands pushed against his arms as she yearned for an escape. His hold let go instantly once he realized what she was wanting. The bed shifted as she threw her legs over the edge, sitting up. Still, she faced away from him. One hand moved upwards swiping away a fresh tear that started to escape her along with a sniffle.
Lucy pushed off the bed silently. His t-shirt that she had claimed years ago cover the boxer-like pajama bottoms that she wore. Tim watched her through the darkness as she made the short journey from the bed to the door. Light from the hallway light infiltrated the bedroom as she pulled the door open and slipped out.
Tim stayed there in the middle of their bed for a few minutes longer. The overwhelming need to comfort her won out over the wonder of if she even expected him to. A deep sigh escaped him as he tossed the comforter off to follow after her.
It didn’t take him long to find her. Lucy was out on the patio. Her knees pulled to her chest as she sat in one of the chairs of the patio set.
A few minutes later and with two steaming cups of coffee in his hand, Tim slid the backdoor open. Lucy barely acknowledges his presence even as he slid her mug across the table. Neither of them said anything as they slowly sipped their coffee. His eyes would cut to her every so often. Her hair danced in the soft LA breeze as her eyes stayed forward. Her light pink cup was cradled in her hands tucked close to her chest.
“Was it Caleb,” he asked softly, finally breaking the silence that blanketed them. He saw the way her breath hitched, how she stiffened involuntarily at the mention of the man’s name. It had been a hard-fought battle to get over the nightmares the first time. More than once he had been woken up by a phone call in the early more hours with a sniffling Lucy on the other end. It made an unwelcome wave of regret and guilt wave over him and settle back then and now it was no different.
Lucy wasn’t his rookie anymore, not his girlfriend nor fiancé. She was his wife. Through sickness and health, good times and bad. His love for her was unwavering, it always would be. How did he make her see that? Why did the thought of him not loving her even come to her mind? Questions. He had so many questions.
“No,” Lucy answered shortly. Her gaze broke away from the grass growing in the backyard to peek at him before looking away. She took another sip from her mug before she looked back at him. “It was you,” she said softly after pausing a beat. Tim’s head snapped towards her. His questions clear on his face.
“We were fighting like we have been for the past three weeks. Or whatever this is,” she trailed off looking back towards the yard. “There was a call. And---you didn’t come home,” her voice cracked as she started to explain. “The last words I said to you were angry, untrue and full of spite. I never got to tell you that I love you again…because I do. I always will. I don’t like this, Tim. I don’t want us to be angry at each other. Every day there is a chance that one of us might not come home and I don’t want our last words to be angry.”
She looked over at him then and the pieces of his heart crumbled. Tears ran down her cheeks, her eyes full of unshed tears. Tim stayed silent as he looked at her. He wanted to let her have her spill. Let her talk through her feelings because that was what Lucy did. Lucy talked things out instead of keeping them buried deep inside. He didn’t want to interrupt her. He had longed to hear her say more than two consecutive sentences to him for the last three weeks. “Will you say something? Please?”
“I love you, Lucy.”
“I know.”
“Do you,” he snapped.
Lucy nodded, swallowing heavily. “I do.”
It was Tim’s turn to nod as he looked away from her. “I don’t like this either,” he admitted after a moment still looking off into the dark backyard. “Can I ask you something?”
“I think you just did,” she played sadly causing him to roll his eyes and a sad grin tug at the corner of his lips. “Go ahead.”
“Why would you think that I don’t love you?”
Lucy’s jaw tightened; her eyes quickly looked away from him. “I don’t know,” she muttered looking down at her hands. “I don’t want to be just another statistic, Tim. Everything felt like it was falling apart. After everything happened...and Angela got pregnant again. Our marriage, work, everything felt like it was crumbling because I wasn’t...,” she trailed off, her voice choppy and unreliable.
Tim knew what she was trying to say. ‘Able to give you that. It was still way early into their new venture when the worst happened. They had only known for a few weeks, none of their friends had known. Still, the pain of what was taken from them was immeasurable.
Tim pushed himself to his feet silently. A few strides later, he was standing in front of her, his hands out waiting for her to drop her hands in his. “What are you doing,” she asked him hesitantly, her brows starting to furrow in confusion. Tim stayed silent, his hands out waiting for hers.
Her hand slowly eased into his. Without a word, Tim gently pulled her to her feet so that he was standing over her. Using both his arms now, Tim wrapped his arms around her, pulling Lucy into his chest.
Finally, she let go. Her hands turned to fist as grabbed onto the back of his t-shirt. Her sobs muffled against his chest as her tears soaked his front. Everything that she had been holding in finally being let go. All the emotions that she hid to put on a brave face finally breaking out.
He held her against him, letting her cry into him. One hand ran smoothly up and down the back of her head, the other rested on the mid of Lucy’s back. His lips pressed against the top of her head as Lucy still cried into his chest.
“Listen to me,” Tim said leaning down to talk into her ear as he continued to hold her against him. “I love you. Nothing…nothing will ever change that. I’m sorry if I made you think I didn’t because of…,” he paused, his voice suddenly lost as his mind drifted back to that day. Tim pressed a long kiss to the top of her head instead of using his words to reaffirm his true feelings for her. “It’s okay. We’re going to be okay.”
If anything good comes out of a nightmare…it’s the relief that comes with waking up.