A chill seeps through my skin to my bones. A gust of fear, if I’m honest. Yes, PTSD has nightmares and flashbacks but this sounds different. “Why would you have attacked me?” I try to put volume in my voice but it’s muted.

He looks up at me for an immeasurable moment. The ever-present tectonic plates slow down until they still. “I have a startle reflex, Elisa. No one can sneak up on me or touch me from behind, whether I’m asleep or awake… If they do, I will rip them apart or crush their bones, much like I did my own mother when I came home from Iraq… All because she tried to wake me one night from a nightmare. Just like you did.” His voice drops to a whisper, and he looks back at the window, beyond the glass pane. His eyes gloss with a liquid film. His right hand closes into a white claw, and his muscle bands quiver under the tailored lines of his jacket. Exactly as they did during his nightmare.

At the sight, my fear scoots to the corner and makes room for something else: for him. What is it about healing the pain of others that liberates us from our own ache? It must be cellular, in our blood, because right now, seeing his anguish, the only thing that matters to me is wiping it away.

I stand to go to him but he steps back, now almost against the wall. He stands tall, in his high-alert posture.

“Don’t!” he says.

I sit back on the sofa to give him the space he needs. “But your mum is okay now?” I ask gently, even though I know she must be if she is traveling to Thailand. But maybe if he starts thinking about the good things, it will help.

He scowls. “Not thanks to me. If my father hadn’t been there to save her, she would have been torn to pieces.” He closes his eyes. Quiver after quiver ripples under his jacket like the flesh of a steed reined close to the bit. My stomach clenches in sync with his shudders. I replay my time with him through this new lens that explains everything. Everything but how this started. What happened to him? Can I ever ask this question without forcing him to relive it?

I have a sudden urge to hold him but his force field is almost tangible. “When did you come back from war?” I ask, hoping this will not trigger any horrors.

“May 31, 2003, at 8:24 p.m.”

“So long ago,” I whisper. A whole epoch away. “And you think because it happened then, it will happen again with me?”

“I don’t think. I know.” His voice is resolute. “Remember what I told you about my memory, Elisa?”

I think through our dialogue for something that can explain this. Then the chill returns to my bones and I shiver.

“That once you experience something, you will always relive it with perfect clarity?” I whisper.

He nods. “Once that flashback is triggered, whether I’m awake or in a dream state, I will act exactly as I did then, feel exactly what I felt, and the outcome will be exactly the same.” He speaks slowly, as though he is reading a judgment.

“Always?”

“Always.”

The word hangs between us, having none of the promise that it holds for other couples. Madly, in my mind, I picture another girl across the world in this very second, warm not cold, with another man, beaming not ashen, their bodies tangled on a tight sofa, whispering “always”.

“I cannot control it, Elisa.” The couple vanishes. “Especially not with you.”

I look up at him. He gazes at my jawline, at my throat. Another shiver runs through me, this one for myself. “Why not around me? What makes me more in danger?”

For the first time, he smiles. It’s a sad smile, the kind we wear sometimes instead of tears. “There is a complication with you.”

“What complication?”

“The fact that when I first look at you, I feel calm. It is very difficult for me to maintain my control and vigilance when you’re around. It’s not a feeling I’ve ever had before with any other person.”

I am only a woman so despite the chill, I cannot help but ask, “Why not?”

His smile becomes true, with a shadow of a dimple. “How to explain this?” He looks around the living room. His eyes alight on a picture on the wall: Reagan and the Solises gathered around me as I blow out a single candle for my first anniversary in the States. He looks back at me.

“See, when we meet people, it’s always in context. Where they are, what they’re saying, doing, feeling. We all have first impressions, but for me those are permanent. Whatever reaction they elicit in me then, that’s what I will re-experience when I see them next. My feelings may develop but that initial perception will always be my first response.

“For example, your roommate and your tango partner. The first time I saw them was from upstairs at Andina. They were letting you get plastered and potentially endangering you. And he was dancing with you, your legs in knots, but you looked so…so lost, sad. I watched you dance. You move like water. So beautiful, but you never smiled once. Then you started downing your drinks like a Marine before deployment and neither of them stopped you. Well, demented as I am, the idea of you upset or sick or drunk or in a car accident with a man who turns out doesn’t even have insurance—it made me taste blood. So every time I’ll see Mr. Solis or Miss Starr, they will piss me off. I may grow to like them, respect them, be grateful to them for the love they’ve shown you—” he points to the picture, “—but still, on first sight, that initial anger will be there until I control it.”

I can’t speak. Even here, discussing my own danger, the idea of his eyes on me while I danced, and his worry about me, starts to restore me.

“But with you, it’s different.” His voice becomes almost a caress. “The very first time I saw you, you were in a painting, only a small, virtuous part of you exposed.” He cups his hands like he is holding a soap bubble. “The light on your shoulder, the way you looked like you were breathing, the gentle curve of your neck…was peaceful. I felt…strangely calm… And calmness is something I’ve coveted for a very long time. It was instantly addictive. I just stood there, watching…” The tectonic plates shift slightly, and the turquoise depths lighten and still. Then they smolder. “But the painting was also sensual so calmness morphed to lust. Maddening lust… It was a perfect storm. The two things that most erode one’s control.”

It’s terrifying that these words warm me when I should stay focused on my impending bone crushing, but they do. Inch by inch, fear leaves my body.

“So now?” I ask, and immediately regret it.

The smile disappears. “So now, every time I see you, I have my guard down. I’m not as vigilant, and therefore, I’m more dangerous.” His voice is sharp again. And his eyes—I’ve never seen them deeper.

For the first time, he steps toward me. I stand to go to him but he puts his hand up. “It all comes down to this, Elisa. I cannot risk hurting you and I cannot give up my own structure either, because without it, I become a monster.”

He shudders, but I feel like he just ripped my chest open. The warmth of his words evaporates as I realize he has not come back to me; he has come to say goodbye. The void that forms when I think of the car accident flares now as though another fatality is looming.

He closes the distance between us quickly, his arms out like he is trying to break a fall. “Elisa, fuck! Are you okay? No—of course, you’re not! How could you be with everything I just told you? Here, sit down.” His eyes are wide. His hand hovers over my shoulder like he doesn’t want to touch me.

“I’m fine. I was just thinking,” I say, blinking at him, confused. Why is he so panicked? It’s not like I collapsed on the floor. Still, I sit on the sofa to calm him.

“Do you need some water? Or food? A break?”

“No, I’m fine, Aiden.” My tone is abrupt despite my intentions. I soften it at the sight of the V between his eyebrows. “I just need to understand you. Why come here at all if it’s just to tell me to stay away?”