I slide the remote from her hand resting on the couch near her stomach and turn the TV off, throwing the living room into darkness. I stand carefully not to wake her and look around, trying to decide whether to cover her with the throw blanket on the other end of the couch so she can sleep here undisturbed, or if I should try to carry her to bed.
I know I chose wrong the moment my arms slide beneath her and lift her against me as I stand. Her body stiffens the second she awakens, and when she opens her eyes to complete darkness, she begins to struggle, finding her voice as it rises in volume from startled whimper to screams of terror. My grip tightens on her so I don’t drop her, and while she fights me like an untranquilized wildcat being put into a crate, I use my long stride to reach the staircase, which alights as soon as I set off the motion sensors. I glance at the top of the stairs to see Scout skid to a stop on the landing.
“It’s okay, boy. I’ve got her,” I tell him, and he sits right where he is, standing guard to make sure I’m not lying, it seems.
“Shhh, goddess, it’s okay. It’s okay,” I try to break through her panic as her nails rip at the skin of my arms. “Astrid, it’s me. It’s Doc.” But she’s in too deep, her eyes squeezed closed with her terror as she yells for me to let her go. I know what to do. I know exactly what to do in order to calm someone from a panic attack. I’m a fucking world-renowned psychologist. But my heart is breaking at the fear twisting Astrid’s face, her beautiful, angelic face that fills my every dream. And all I want to do is make that look go away. I never want her to look at me like this, like she’s terrified of me, of what I might do to her. It kills my soul.
So I do the only thing I can in this moment, with her flailing, stiffening, and wriggling her body as she tries with all her might to make me drop her so she can run.
In one fluid movement—because she’s tiny, so fucking tiny compared to me—her ass meets one of the stairs at the same time my knees do a couple below her, and I twist her around to face me. My body goes between her legs, and I take hold of her wrists as she tries to hit me with the backside of her little fists. I pull them toward me, trapping each one of her arms between my sides and my biceps.
And then I just hug her.
My cheek comes down to rest on top of her blonde head, and I just hug her tight, whispering to her over and over. “It’s me, goddess. It’s just me. Astrid, it’s just me, baby. It’s Doc. It’s Neil, sweet girl.” Until I realize I’m rocking her, continuing to remind her who I am, that I’m not who her nightmare made her think I was. And her wails of terror slowly calm, slowly quiet, until she’s sobbing. Sobbing against my chest until I feel her tears soak through my T-shirt and drip down between my pecs. Her fists at my back relax until her fingers are clutching me to her. “It’s me, sweet goddess,” I assure her one last time, and I feel her finally nod against me. But she doesn’t let me go.
I don’t know how long we stay like that, rocking back and forth in the middle of the night on my staircase, her wrapped around me, our bodies entwined like lovers with my hips between her legs. I don’t know how long, and I don’t care. I would stay like this for-fucking-ever to get to feel this close to her. I just hate that it happened this way, to pull her from a nightmare, because she woke up in the dark and someone had her.
And then her soft, pitiful voice comes, and I close my eyes at the sound of it, wishing it was for a different reason—the same words, just a different meaning. “Please… take me to bed, Neil.”
I hold her for just a moment more, not knowing when I’ll ever get the opportunity to be this close with her again, not knowing if I’ll ever get to be wrapped in her arms as she’s pressed tight against me, where I can feel the heat of her core through her tiny pajama shorts.
I nod, kissing the top of her head and breathing in the scent of her hair. And then I wrap one arm around the small of her back and reach out to the banister to balance as I stand, and her legs instinctively lock behind me.