Page 166 of In Somnis

He makes a quiet sound that might be a laugh. “She sounds perfect.”

“She was.” My throat tightens again, but softer this time, less like drowning and more like the ache of something precious. “She really was.”

The room settles around us. My headache is still there but duller now, worn down to manageable. Mr. Muffin is tucked to my chest, and Nevan’s heartbeat is steady under my ear, and the yellow blanket is warm, and outside the window, Vernonia is doing whatever small towns do at this hour.

“New rule,” Nevan says eventually, his voice is low and slightly rough, as though he might be tired too.

I smile faintly into his chest. “Rule three?”

We really are collecting these now.

“Rule three. Bad days don’t go alone. You come to me. I come to you. No more going through it alone. Deal?”

I think about Spencer’s voice on the phone, the hospital corridors, and all the nights in the weeks I spent trying to be fine because there was nobody to be not fine with.

I hook my pinky finger with his. “Deal. Bad days don’t go alone.”

I close my eyes.

My mom would have liked this town.

The thought arrives soft and simple, without the usual sting, and I let it stay.

Nevan’s heartbeat is steady, the blanket is warm, and somewhere between one breath and the next, between the grief, the gratitude and the strange, complicated warmth of being held by someone who understands the loneliness of wanting a parent you can’t have…

I fall asleep.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Ridge

She’s crying.

She’s trying to keep it quiet, which somehow makes it worse.

I lie awake and listen, purposefully avoiding why I’m listening instead of putting a pillow over my head or simply getting my shit together and making my way over there to comfort her.

I need something to keep my hands busy, and Derek forgot to restock my lollipops.

Sabotage takes many forms.

Instead, one of Melanie’s crystals sits on the nightstand, so I pick it up without looking, turning it between my fingers in the dark.

My phone is face down on the nightstand beside me. Miller has called four times today. Four.

Apparently, my publisher is starting to develop opinions, and the only thing standing between me and a spectacularly expensive contractual meltdown is getting back into someone’s dream and doing what I’m very good at.

Except she is crying.

So, I lie here and listen, and even if she were to fall asleep now, I wouldn’t be able to make myself go in. Wouldn’t open that door and start building things designed to frighten her while she is already upset.

Not tonight.

There are lines. Apparently, I own at least one.

The crying stops, and then there’s a male voice.

I put the crystal back down and hold my breath, listening to the muffled conversation happening on the other side of the wall. I can’t hear what they’re saying, the words don’t make it through, just the cadence—Lennon talking the way Lennon talks, which is to say at length, with feeling, and in multiple directions at once. I’ve gotten used to the sound of it. It’s become a thing I notice the absence of, which is its own problem I’m not examining right now.