Blanket of Fear

“I’m not a porcelain doll, Zack. I can take care of myself. I know that you have things you need to do without me being there,” Eliza muttered before she let one of her hands push its way through her hair, wanting nothing more than to convince him that she wasn’t going to shatter into a million pieces the second he walked away from her. She knew he was only trying to prove how much he loved her, but she couldn’t handle the fact that he wouldn’t let her have even five minutes alone. It was as if all trust in his friends had disappeared after she had shown him the nightmare.

“I don’t want to risk her hurting you, baby,” he murmured into her forehead in reply to her words before he pressed his lips against her skin softly. “We’ve come so far together that I don’t know what I’d do if she hurt you.”

“If who hurt her?” Val’s voice asked from the doorway of the bedroom that they were currently standing. In an instant, both of them felt their blood run cold, and even though Eliza had only moments before been trying to convince him to leave her alone, she was now clutching onto his arm like a vice grip. She definitely didn’t want to be left alone with her; not after the nightmare.

“No one,” Zack told her, his eyes meeting the hazel-eyed woman before he wrapped his arms more tightly around Eliza’s waist. “No one is going to hurt her. I won’t let it happen,” he continued. Eliza watched as he kept his eyes trained solely on Val’s, and she couldn’t help but feel a small shiver pass through her when she saw the cold expression in the other woman’s eyes. Something had changed about Val since she’d met her, and it saddened her. Val had, once upon a time, been the only person in the house she had considered a friend. And now, it seemed, that friendship had given way to something far more sinister than anyone ever could have imagined.

“Sometimes you can’t protect the people you love, Zachary,” Val said with just a hint of bitterness in her voice before she stepped closer into the bedroom. “Just look at what happened with Brian and Michelle; with me and Michelle. Neither of us could protect her, not even from you,” she snapped before turning to walk out of the bedroom, leaving Zack and Eliza alone once again.

If they hadn’t been sure before that the woman was up to something, they were now. Both of them knew that she couldn’t be trusted after a speech like that, and it worried both of them. Zack didn’t honestly know if he’d be able to kill Val if it came down to that in the end of all this. He had known her longer even than he had known some of the guys in Avenged sevenfold. She had built up a relationship with her; a friendship he’d thought bordered that of siblings. In many ways, he compared her to his deceased sister, Zina. She was a strong woman who knew what she wanted in life, the same as Zina had, and she knew how to achieve all those things.

But now, he was losing that. He would not choose Val over Eliza. He knew that in this matter, he had to listen to his heart over his brain. His heart was telling him that he needed Eliza the same way he needed oxygen, and he wasn’t going to deprive himself of that. He loved her too much to choose someone else over her now; especially after going through hell and back for her.

“Don’t worry about it, baby,” Zack murmured into Eliza’s neck, knowing that she didn’t feel good about having seen Val. The woman’s presence had jostled her, and she didn’t like it at all. She sighed and leaned into his shoulder when he brought her closer to press his lips against her neck, wrapping his arms around her waist tightly.

“I can’t help it, Zack,” she whispered, looking up at his face before shaking her head. She was still scared that at the end of this, she was going to lose her boyfriend. She didn’t want to see him die; she didn’t want to see someone she’d considered such a close friend kill him in front of her. She didn’t know if her heart could handle that, and she didn’t want to put herself in a position to figure out whether or not she could.

“I meant what I said, Eliza,” Zack told her, grabbing her hands and squeezing them lightly in his. “She’s not going to hurt you. I’m not going to let it happen. I’ll die before she or anyone else lay a finger on you.”

“Don’t say that,” Eliza muttered before she pulled away from him, shaking her head as she walked over to the bed to lay down on it, pulling a pillow up to her chest and wrapping herself around it in a small, compact ball. Zack watched as she just lay there, feeling his heart ache when the tears started to fall out of her eyes. He hated to see her cry, and even more than that, he hated knowing that there was nothing he could do to dry them right now.

“It’s true,” he urged, walking over to the bed and sitting down next to her. He didn’t say anything else for several minutes before he smiled as he pushed his hand back through his hair. “Remember when we were at Papa Roach’s mansion? And how you cut yourself and forced me to drink so I wasn’t going to die? Remember that fierce protectiveness that you felt over me, Eliza?” He asked her.

She seemed to think about it for a minute before nodding, looking up into his eyes for just a few moments. He smiled when he saw that he had her attention, and then continued. “That’s how I feel about you, baby. I’m so fucking in love with you, and I can’t stand to see someone hurt you. I don’t know if my heart would heal if it happened. I have to protect you,” he told her, laying down so that he could pull her up against his chest.

Eliza’s eyes widened at his words, because she hadn’t ever had someone care about her that much. Never before had someone said they were in love with her and meant it. Sure, Sean had said it all the time. But she knew now that he had never once meant it. He didn’t love her; he never had. He’d only been trying to get something from her; something that she wasn’t even sure what it was. She didn’t really know why he was so important to her. All she knew was that he was dangerous, and she was lucky that Zack and the others had kidnapped her that night in San Diego.

“What are you thinking about?” Zack murmured into his ear as he pushed his hand back through her hair soothingly. He was going to work on trying to respect her privacy more often from now on; he knew that she didn’t like it when he looked into her thoughts without getting permission first, and he wanted to stop doing that. Love meant you did hard things for people, and stopping himself from automatically seeking out the truth on her mind was going to be hard. But he knew that if anyone could make him do that, it was Eliza and his emotions for her.

“The night you took me out of that apartment in San Diego,” she admitted softly, putting a small smile on her face as she tilted her head to look at him, completely blocking Val and her nightmare out of her mind for now.

Zack sighed, wondering if that was a good thing or not. He still wasn’t sure if she was happy that he had kidnapped her out of that hellhole she’d been living in. He knew that he had provided for her and given her the opportunity to live life in a way she’d never been able to before, but he wasn’t sure if that was enough to make her truly happy that he’d gotten her out of there. Eliza saw the worry on his face, and just sighed as she brought her hand up to touch his face.

“It’s a good thing,” she told him before pushing her hand up and down his chest. “I don’t want to go back to that life ever again. The best thing you could have done for me was to save me.”

Zack nodded, feeling more relieved at Eliza’s words. He just closed his eyes and then laid down next to her again before pulling her up close to him. It was going to be a long, hard night for the two of them, but he knew that if he had her in his arms, he’d be able to get through it alright.