Page 66 of Never Alone
"Yeah."
"It's the floor."
"I've slept on worse."
I didn't ask where. I didn't want to make him say something he didn't want to say at ten o'clock.
I got into bed.
The sheets had been washed that afternoon—he had thrown them in while I was finishing the closet. They smelled like the soap he used, which was not the soap I used. The pillow on my side was firmer than the one I would have chosen. I didn't move it.
I reached up and turned off the lamp.
The room went dark except for the small yellow bar of light under the door from the hallway.
I lay on my back. I could hear him breathing. Slow. Even. Already slowing the way a person's breath slowed when they were settling for sleep.
I hadn't slept in a room with another adult in eight months.
I hadn't slept in a room with another adult who was not Nicholas in thirteen years.
The breath on the floor stayed slow and steady. He didn't say anything else. He didn't need to.
I closed my eyes.
I opened them.
I rolled over to his side of the bed and leaned my head over the edge.
He was on his back on the sleeping bag, hands folded on his chest, eyes closed. Not asleep. Not anywhere near it.
"Cole."
"Yeah."
"Get in the bed."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine."
"I'm fine, Tessa."
"You are six feet tall on a sleeping bag on a wood floor."
"It's a thick sleeping bag."
"Cole."
He didn't open his eyes.
"I can't sleep in a room with a man sleeping on the floor," I said. "I can't. I'm going to lie here for the next eight hours listening for every sound you make. Get up."
He opened his eyes and looked up at me from the floor.
A beat.
"Tessa—"
