Page 7 of The Rut in the Road

“Did you?” I asked, pointedly.

He let out a sharp breath through his nose, which was answer enough.

“So then let’s eat,” I said by way of compromise.

“Fine,” he agreed. “But in the bean bag.”

“Seriously?” Me eating while curled up in the bean bag was enough of an exercise in balance and not spilling things. Me trying to eat while curled up on Raj in the bean bag was guaranteed to make a mess, and I hated having to wash the cover to the stupid thing.

“I—” His voice faltered a little, and I immediately felt a stab of guilt.

“Okay,” I agreed. “Bean bag.”

He pulled me into another hug, and I let him hold me until a little of the tension went out of his arms.

“But eat,” I insisted, stepping back.

He swallowed, then nodded. “Okay.”

Sometime around midnight,I texted Ward, feeling horribly guilty and hoping I didn’t wake him, letting him know I wasn’t going to be in first thing—maybe not at all.

I didn’t tell him why.

Raj had actually curled up onmein the bean bag, which made eating my pizza even more difficult, but given that he’d barely finished half ofone, I spent enough time worrying that I didn’t really have much energy to eat more than a few slices, either.

He also wouldn’t talk about it. Or couldn’t. I hadn’t even gotten out of him which it was, this time. He usually didn’t tell me much about his cases at the FBI. Sometimes it was because they were long-term cases that they’d been tracing for years, mostly paperwork and rooting through people’s financial records and social media accounts, and it would have been incredibly boring. Sometimes it was because he wasn’t allowed to share details outside of the FBI, even if it wasn’t quite so boring. And sometimes it was because it was something that bothered him so much he didn’twantto talk about it.

I didn’t know, but I strongly suspected that this one was the latter.

So I let him curl up with his head on my stomach, one arm around my back in the shifting pellets of the bean bag. The other he would periodically use to pick up a piece of pizza from the plate we were sharing.

“Did you eat yesterday?” I asked him, when it became clear that he had no intention of continuing to eat.

“Somebody got sandwiches,” came the response.

“Did you eat one?” I asked, again.

He grunted in a way that I’d learned was affirmative, even if he wasn’t particularly pleased about whatever it was.

“Just one?”

Another yes-grunt.

“You didn’t sleep, did you?” I asked, then.

They sometimes used a break room or caught naps under or at their desks when cases were high-pressure and had to be solved.

He shook his head, his skull pressing—not uncomfortably—into my stomach.

“You should sleep,” I told him softly, and his arm tightened at my back. “You should go to bed,” I said gently, and he sighed.

“Do—do you want me to go?” he asked, and even if I had been thinking that—which I definitely had not been—the vulnerability in his tone would have made me unthink it immediately.

“No, I do not want you to go—I want you get some sleep. Here. With me.”

He let out another shuddering sigh. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep,” he whispered.

“You should still try,” I said softly.