Morgan stewed. There was no other word for it—he was stewing in uncertainty, in wonder, in his own pain and discomfort, and in the rising urge to go after Ty and get some real answers from him. Not that he’d actually be able to go anywhere since Ty had surely taken his boat with him, and there was no other way to this little house, but …
The thought left him feeling claustrophobic. Morgan was alone, in a house he’d never been in before, one that belonged to a person he didn’t know, and who couldn’t possibly be the same Ty Smith that Uncle Phil had written to him about. He had a blinding headache, and the ache in his shoulder only seemed to get worse, he was thirsty again, and now he had to go to the bathroom.
Wonderful. Brilliant. He should wait until Ty got back for that; he didn’t want to go rummaging through his house without permission. But the time seemed to stretch longer and longer, until Morgan was sure it had been more than an hour sinceTy left. Wasn’t it supposed to be a fifteen-minute trip there? Had something happened to him? Washerummaging throughMorgan’shouse?
It didn’t matter; Morgan’s bladder was making its case very plainly. He was going to have to get up on his own. He squeezed his eyes shut for a long moment, then gritted his teeth and ever so slowly began to sit upright. A wave of nausea struck him, and Morgan clapped his good hand over his mouth and breathed through it as best he could.
God, please don’t let me throw up all over someone else’s bed.
Luckily, the nausea faded a few seconds later, and he was able to turn and place his feet on the floor without a repeat of it. Now that he was nearly upright, he needed to figure out where he was going.
Morgan carefully raised the cloth from his eyes, keeping them slitted so the light was at a minimum … then relaxed as he realized the sun had gone down enough that there was no direct glare anymore, just a gentle, diffuse warmth through the only window the room had. He looked around, taking in the spartan nature of the place. One bed, a simple bedside table without even a lamp on it, and a chest in the corner. No closet, no mirror, and … huh, there were no outlets in this room. Was it possible that the house was not electrified?
Well, he’d find out soon enough. Morgan pushed carefully to his feet, good hand braced on the wall for support, and began to shuffle toward the bedroom door. It had an old-fashioned brass doorknob that he had to twist around several times before he finally got it open, and then he slipped into the next room. This one had two windows, but the light was still soft enough that he could look around without pain.
What Morgan saw was … kind of sad, actually. The furnishings were incredibly sparse, just a plain wooden table and two chairs, a wall of cabinets and cupboards, and a kitchen that looked likeit was nothing more than a sink. No refrigerator, no stove … how did this guy survive?
Figure that out after you find the bathroom.There were two doors, one that presumably led out the front and down to Ty’s dock, and another on the right. Morgan made his way to it, opened it up, and … yeah, okay. That was technically a toilet—or more specifically, a hole in the floor that let out directly into the water below. There was toilet paper and a little trash can where Morgan presumed you had to put it since, yeah, no plumbing, but … seriously?
It took him five minutes to just get into position to piss without making a mess and another ten to get up again through the surging headache that bending down like that had brought on. Morgan was trembling by the time he exited the bathroom, wanting nothing more than to collapse right back into bed. It felt too far away to get there without face-planting on the floor, though, so he gingerly sat down in one of the chairs and leaned his good elbow on the table, breathing through the pain.
The furnishings might be plain, but they were sturdy, at least. In fact ... He ran his hand over the smooth surface of the table, then dipped it beneath the edge, searching for—aha, there it was. His uncle’s mark, a sun with wavy rays that were almost more like tentacles. Uncle Phil had brought in extra money by turning driftwood into furniture, and his pieces were uniformly high quality. Morgan had one himself, in fact, a coffee table that he’d argued with Bentley over for weeks before winning permission to set it up in their living room.
“It doesn’t match the style,” Bentley had complained, and honestly, Morgan should have known right then and there that they weren’t going to work out. Bentley was militantly anti-sentimentalist, always wanting the most modern and edgy look and never, ever giving consideration to things like family heirlooms or historical pieces. Morgan had given in for the mostpart—his partner had come from a complicated family, and he tried to be sensitive to that—but he’d been unwilling to let the one piece he had from his Uncle Phil get forgotten in a storage unit somewhere, not when the pattern in the wood had been so fascinating and the table itself so unique.
And now it was back in the apartment he’d left behind, abandoned in the wake of Morgan’s hurt feelings. Bentley had probably already thrown it away.
I should have sucked it up and stayed longer. I should have hired movers. I should have …But he couldn’t have stayed there another minute without losing his tenuous grasp on his own sanity.
Morgan stared down at the table, taking in the smooth, clean lines of it and the way the wood was left as natural as it could be. There were bumps here and there, like little waves, and he rubbed his thumb over one of them again and again as he contemplated, not for the first time, how desperately he’d fucked up his life.
I could have died today.
He could have drowned out there; it was pure luck that Ty had been close by when he was. Morgan could have drowned and left everything behind, and as near as some of his misses with his mental health had been lately, he’d still never seriously considered suicide. Not when he’d be leaving Katie and his niece and his mother behind. His dad, eh, whatever, but his mother would be devastated. He had people who loved him even if they weren’t all the people he’d hoped would love him before.
Morgan very gently laid his head down on the table and just breathed. He ached everywhere, his head was pounding to its very own rhythm, and his shoulder was immobilized, but he was still there. He was lucky to be feeling all these things, lucky that he could sit upright and breathe in and out and press his face tohis uncle’s table. All he had to do now was … well, keep doing it all.In and out … in and out …
He fell into a doze, and it was with great reluctance that he came out of that doze to a cool hand touching the side of his face. “Mmm, too warm,” Ty said, his voice a little less steady than it had been before.
“Hey,” Morgan said hoarsely. Ugh, his neck was fucked up now too. “You were gone for a while.”
“I’m sorry.” Ty sounded genuinely apologetic too. “I didn’t realize how different everything would be inside. I looked for orange bottles in the medicine cabinet, but there were no bottles at all, so I had to look in your bags. I couldn’t tell what everything was, though, and I realized I had no food you would want to eat here, so I grabbed some of that and a change of clothes as well. Then I worried you’d be cold, so I brought another blanket.” He held up an entire duffel bag that looked stuffed to the brim.
“Ah.” Well, that explained the timing at least. “That’s okay; I should have been more specific about where things were.”
“Medicines go in the medicine cabinet,” Ty said firmly.
Usually, sure, but it wasn’t like there was a hard-and-fast rule about that, except … it struck Morgan that Uncle Phil might have asked for Ty’s help a time or two in the past. He’d probably kept all his meds in the same place, and Morgan hadn’t even finished unpacking his yet.
“I’ll put everything away when I get back,” he said, half to himself and half to Ty, who was already rummaging through the bag again. A moment later he came out with an armful of bottles and plunked them down one by one on the table.
“Which is right?” he demanded.
Jesus, it looked like he’d brought every single bottle that might be vaguely connected to wellness in the lighthouse. Here were his probiotics, here were the vitamins, here were the THCgummies he took when it was almost impossible to get to sleep … and then there was the ibuprofen, Tylenol, aspirin, and assorted other over-the-counter meds that Morgan had brought along out of an abundance of caution.
He was glad he’d done that had now. “I’ll take some Tylenol.” Ty’s hands hovered above the bottles, his eyes wide like he was afraid of giving the wrong answer.
Maybe he can’t read.Or maybe he was dyslexic or had some other learning disability. “I’ve got it,” Morgan said, except he didn’t have it, because he only had one hand, and he couldn’t get the childproof cap off that way. “Fuck,” he muttered as he wrestled with the bottle to no avail.
