Page 181 of On His Mind

When the guys come back to the room, Stanley is the first voice I hear. And Aspen was right. He bought one of everything because he announces, “I didn’t know what everyone liked.”

Then he pops his head into the room and says, “Aspen, come out here. I got you something.”

She keeps her eyes on me, her eyes gleaming.

Stanley enters the room, looking at me and then back at her. “What is this?”

She chuckles. “Told you.”

He picks her up in one smooth motion. Her body folds over his right shoulder, and her hair falls in front of her face as she shrieks. He hauls her to the living room.

Percy walks in right after and points at them. “What was that?”

I try her method. I keep my eyes out the door. He sits on the bed and watches me.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” he asks quietly.

I look at him because I can’t help myself.

He says, “Ermington got one of everything, so it took forever. Are you okay?”

I smile, not able to keep it up. “Yeah.”

He kisses me, and I hear Aspen trying to run away, but Stanley catches her again. I laugh, listening to them mess around. Benson is scolding Stanley. Blue says something I barely hear.

Aspen makes it back into the bedroom with two snacks. She hands me one and then we high-five across the bed.

I lie in Percy’s arms for the night, listening to Stanley and Aspen bicker over snacks, and I’m exactly where I want to be.

Chapter 56

Percy

Iwaketotheweight of her sleeping across my chest, and for one blurred second, I don’t know where we are. An old instinct takes the wheel before I’m awake enough to stop it.Wake her. Get her up and gone before the house catches her in your bed.My whole body tightens around the thought the way it tightened for years, the reflex worn so far down into me that it fires before my eyes are even open. Then I open them, and I see Stanley face down on the next bed with Aspen tucked under his arm, and I remember where I am, and I let the breath go.

Nobody’s coming to catch us. There’s nothing left to catch.

A year ago this fear ran my whole life, and now I lie here in the gray mountain light with her heartbeat going slow against my ribs, and I can’t quite reach it anymore. Now that I’m awake, I don’t actually remember how it felt to be that scared all the time.I’ve made a rough kind of peace with the two years I wasted too afraid to hold the exact thing I’m holding right now. I don’t get them back. But I stopped. I finally stopped.

I pull her in tighter and kick the blanket off both of us, letting the cold air come in and drink up the heat we’ve made.

Stanley shifts on the next bed, and when I glance over, he’s cracked one eye open and caught me.

“The hell, Mon Petit Percy.” His voice is thick with sleep. “Are you watching us sleep, you freak?”

I put a finger to my lips. The last thing I need at six in the morning is Stanley loose on theMon Petit Percymaterial — the little pet name he gave me years back. It’s French, technically, so it lands in the one part of me that language usually only reaches to wound — except out of Stanley’s mouth it doesn’t wound. It’s just his. My father gave me the words, and Stanley gave them somewhere soft to come down.

“Aspen.” He noses into her hair, loud enough to wake the whole floor. “Why don’t you ever snuggle me like that, huh? Baby girl.”

I sigh.

“Leave them alone,” Aspen mumbles into the pillow.

“You never let me hold you like that—”

“Because you kick.”

“I won’t kick you. Not right now, I promise.” He hauls her body up onto his chest, lets out a long, contented sigh — and then shoves her straight back off. “Okay. Get off me, you’re heavy.”