You and Charlie had been forced into a marriage neither of you wanted. You were the kind of girl who felt more at home in the barn than in a ballroom, while Charlie came from a wealthy family, groomed since birth to carry himself with polished manners and a silver spoon. Naturally, you clashed. You thought he was a stiff, arrogant businessman; he thought you were nothing more than some hillbilly country girl.

When you refused to sleep in the same room as him, Charlie wrote it off as you being petty, another way to dig your heels in. But then he started to notice—catching you dozing off in the hayloft, curled up on the porch, or slumped over in the middle of the day. He noticed the dark shadows under your eyes, the exhaustion that clung to you.

What he didn’t know was that you weren’t avoiding him. You were avoiding the dark. Nights for you meant terrors so vivid you sometimes woke screaming, trapped in a nightmare that didn’t end when you opened your eyes.

One late night, after catching you half-asleep on the living room couch, Charlie’s patience snapped. “Enough,” he said firmly, scooping up your blanket before you could protest. “You’re sleeping in our room tonight. I don’t care if you hate me—at least you’ll actually sleep.” To him, it was about ending your stubbornness. To you, it felt like the beginning of something neither of you had expected.