The Rose He Killed novel Chapter 213

Chapter 192: Tom’s Terrors

Bella pov

The night terrors started.

They weren’t nightmares- had expected nightmares, the kind you could wake a child from and soothe. These were different. Tom woke up at 2 AM screaming, completely unseeing, and thrashing away from hands that weren’t there. He called for me in a voice that broke something fundamental in my chest, because I was right there. I was holding him, but he couldn’t hear me.

Somewhere Grace started crying. Her room was two doors down. The walls in this penthouse were good, but not that good, and Tom’s screaming had reached her even in her sleep.

I heard Nadia’s door open. Soft footsteps moved down the corridor. Then came Nadia’s voice, low and steady-the particular murmur she used when she was settling Grace in the dark.

I stayed with Tom.

This was the thing nobody prepared you for-the specific, impossible mathematics of two children needing you at the same time, in different rooms, for different reasons. It was the way your body tried to go in both directions at once and couldn’t. I held Tom and talked to him, but I felt Grace crying in my chest like a second heartbeat. I trusted Nadia because I had chosen her precisely for moments like this one. So, I stayed as Grace went quiet after minutes.

Tom terror lasted four minutes. It was four minutes of Tom not knowing where he was while I held him, talking to him, and Caleb crouched in front of us. Caleb said his name, low and steady, over and over-an anchor for Tom to find his way back to.

When Tom terror finally broke, he was soaking wet, trembling, and exhausted. He looked at us both like he was checking to see if we were real.

“Hi,” Caleb said quietly.

“Hi,” Tom said, his voice very small.

“You’re home,” I said.

す

He nodded slowly, still checking our faces. Then, he leaned forward, put his head on Caleb’s shoulder, and closed his eyes. Caleb picked him up and carried him back to our bed.

That was where Tom slept for the rest of the night, pressed between us like he needed to feel us both breathing.

Soon after Caleb and I lay in the dark on either side of him.

“Four minutes,” I said, very quietly.

“I know.”

“It felt longer.”

“It always does,” he said. “Dr. Abara said they would get shorter.”

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Chapter 192 Pom & Terrors

+know what she said.” I pressed my lips together. “I’m allowed to say it felt long.”

“You are,” he said immediately. “I’m sorry. You’re right.”

I looked at Tom’s face in the dark. It was slack and peaceful now, with nothing left of the terror in his expression.

“When it breaks and he looks at us like that,” I said. “Like he’s checking to see if we’re real.”

“Yeah,” Caleb said.

“That’s the part that gets me.”

“Me too,” he said. “Every time.”

We were quiet for a moment.

Claim

“We’re going to get through this,” I said. I wasn’t saying it to him-I was saying it to Tom, to the room, and to whatever part of the universe needed to hear it stated out loud. “We’ve gotten through everything else.”

“Yes,” Caleb said. “We have.”

At six-fifteen, before either of us had slept properly, Grace woke up by crying softly.

I heard Nadia go to her, at seven-ten the bedroom door opened very softly as Nadia appeared in the gap.

Grace was on her hip, wide awake, already looking past Nadia into the room, and found Tom.

Her face lit up with a massive grin she couldn’t hide, and she made the special, happy noise she only ever

made for him.

Tom stirred, opening his heavy eyes. “Hi, Grace,” he said, his voice rough from sleep and the night terror.

Grace reached both arms out to him. Nadia looked at me, I nodded, and she set Grace down at the foot of the bed. Grace immediately crawled right up to Tom. She grabbed his arm and stared closely at his face, studying him just like she had the day he came home.

Then she made that special sound again.

“I’m here,” Tom said. “I told you I’d be back.”

Grace grabbed his ear-her ultimate sign of approval-and Tom leaned into it with the patient tolerance of a big brother.

I looked up at the ceiling trying to control my tears as Caleb’s hand found mine over Tom’s legs.

******

Dr. Abara had told me this might happen. She explained it clearly and kindly. She called it a normal response to an abnormal event-his nervous system processing what his mind couldn’t yet. She said it would improve with consistency, time, and continuous evidence that he was safe. I had understood it completely, but it did not help at all when I was sitting in the dark at 2 AM listening to my son scream.

The guilt came in the quiet moments. It didn’t come during crises, because in a crisis, I was functional, focused, and present. It came when Tom refused to go into the garden because the garden had a gate. It

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Chapter 192-om’s Terrors

Clas

came when he asked me to stay in the bathroom while he washed his hands, rather than waiting outside. It came when he stood at the front door in his school uniform on Thursday morning, looking at the outside

world like it was a place requiring a careful assessment before entry.

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