Page 68 of Dollhouse

I almost follow him, his mood weighing heavily on my heart. But like Jesse told me, everyone heals differently. After all, Bo’s already been through this before—with Eric when he was a kid. He’s got experience trying to get his life back together after men have done their best to ruin it.

He can have tonight. Jesse won’t be able to hold off any longer on giving him his space and we can all see it’s killing him to see Bo like this.

These men…they’re doing their best, too. Wanting to fix everything for us and knowing there’s no way they can repair what’s been broken.

THIRTY-FIVE

The sheets feel cold,empty.

Roused by the silence, I blink the sleep away and scan the dark living room. Dawn has just barely started to illuminate the gaps in the trees outside the window, but the birds chirp like it’s the middle of the fucking day.

Since coming home, Emma’s made a giant makeshift bed by pushing two of the largest couches together so that she can wedge herself right between Bo’s protective arm and my chest. When he’s in the mood, Jesse will pass out curled around Bo’s back so that we’re a messy pile of traumatized and overprotective people trying to make it through the night.

I keep finding her in weird places when we wake, though. Even when we moved right beneath the vaulted ceiling of the living room, she still claimed it felt claustrophobic. It seems the dog cage made her dollhouse nightmares worse, so I don’t say anything about it.

But when I see her lying out in the freezing yard, and Molly scratching to get inside, I stumble to my feet.

Jesse rouses. “Wa’s wrong?” His overgrown hair is insane, voice still heavy with sleep.

“Where’s Bo?” I ask, looking around as I pull on my boots by the back door.

I hear him shuffling behind me, but my attention’s only on her as I step into the chilled morning air and lift the bundle of blankets in my hands before carrying her back inside.

This can’t happen again. The blanket’s damp from the morning dew and though the temperatures aren’t freezing, it’s still not warm enough for this bullshit.

She murmurs grumpily in her sleep as I carry her back inside and kick the door shut, carrying her to our makeshift bed and setting her in the pile of the blankets. Molly gets right to work as a foot-warmer and I turn my attention back to the next issue.

Bo.

The coffee pot’s off and there’s no chance that Bo wouldn't have started it if he was up and moving around.

“Bo?” Jesse’s voice is dulled from upstairs and for a horrific moment, I imagine him finding Bo’s body, hung or bleeding.

The stairs fly under my feet as I race up them, trying to intervene before Jesse possibly sees something that could fuck him up for life, but he’s right at the top, and I almost take us both to the ground as I smash into his chest.

“Man, what the fuck?” He rubs his chest, glaring at me. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I just…I just thought for a minute—” I shake my head, breath heavy. “I don't know, did you find him?”

“No,” he says, and I know he had the same thoughts as me. That the behavior we’d witnessed the last few days was more of a red flag than we’d guessed. His refusal to let anyone help him with his first shower, or to let Jesse try and have the doctor come back out for a physical. Then, after days of scarcely speaking outside of a monotone conversation, he’d offered Jesse a moment of connection, a soft hug in the kitchen I wasn’t meantto see. Where he’d let Jesse wrap his arms tightly around him as their murmured conversation drifted into the living room.

I couldn’t hear what was said, but I wasn't meant to. That was for them. At the time, I thought it was a good thing, a breakthrough. He might let us back in.But now he’s gone.

“My fucking car is missing,” Jesse says, looking out the window at the end of the hallway. Stalking over, I pull back the curtain, and sure as shit there’s an empty spot in front of the house.

“Call him. For all we know he could just be out for a drive. Maybe he just needed some air.”

Jesse turns on me, throwing his arm back toward the window to indicate the goddamn sunrise. “All we fucking have here is air?”

I can’t keep my voice calm because I’m just talking shit to keep Jesse from freaking out. Obviously this isn’t good. “I don’t know! There’s no trying to guess what's going through his head right now, call him.”

He curses under his breath as he heads back downstairs but I’m not in the mood to fight. Checking in his room, the bathroom, anywhere I can think might give us a hint of what he was doing while we slept.

I find it in Emma’s room. A note written and slipped into her current read, propped open so she’d see it easily. He’d bent the spine, and she’ll be furious.

Em-

Hey, honey.