“That an order or an invitation?” I hear it leave my mouth, want to bite it out of the air, fail.
“Order.” She snatches my bag like I’m a rookie who can’t be trusted with luggage. “You need the bed more than I need optics. You’re useless if you seize up.”
“I’m never useless,” I say, soft and stupid.
“Sleep,” she counters—softer and smarter. She shoves the bag through the doorway and closes it between us with a decisivesnickthat says everything else we don’t.
I stare at the wood like it might open if I tell the truth to it. On the other side: drawers slide; water runs; a hair dryer coughs to life. I unfold the blanket, aim it at the couch, and miss because the couch is too far and I’m tired enough to fail at gravity.
“Professional,” I tell the room. The room doesn’t laugh.
Storm-quiet settles—fancy fixtures humming, pretending not to watch. I fish a second blanket out of the credenza and shake it over the couch like that makes it a bed. It doesn’t. It makes it a couch with delusions of grandeur.
I toe off soaked sneakers and tug at the knot my spine’s been saving for a special occasion. It answers with a hot little spasm that flashes down my lower back and into my hip like an electric apology. “Perfect timing,” I tell the ceiling.
The bedroom door clicks. Riley reappears—hair twisted into a no-nonsense knot, face scrubbed to the kind of pretty she’d roll her eyes at if I said it. She’s clutching a stack of hotel pillows large enough to smother a linebacker.
“Here,” she says, dropping them with triage precision. “Lumbar, side sleep, head. Build a wedge. Keep your spine neutral.”
“I’ve got the bed,” I say at the same time, because my mouth never reads the room. “You take it.”
Her brows tick up. “No.”
“Riley. I’m not letting you sleep on a couch because a citywide outage is bad at logistics.”
“You’re notlettingme?” Arms fold, hip hooks—punctuation. “Adorable.”
I hold my hands up. “That’s not—” The muscle zings again. I don’t reach for it. She sees me not reach for it. Clinical, lethal.
“Sit,” she orders, already sculpting pillows into architecture. “Prove you can lie here for more than ten seconds without swearing and we’ll revisit your chivalry speech.”
“Revisit?” I lower myself like the couch might buck. The wedge hits the sore spot just right; the pain eases by degrees I pretend not to feel. “Feels fine.”
Her look hears the lie and declines to prosecute. “I’m in the bedroom. You’re on the couch. I set an alarm for anti-inflammatories. If you sneeze like a pulled muscle, you call me.”
“I don’t sneeze like a pulled muscle.”
“You do. It’s very macho.” The corner of her mouth almost tips; she kills it and points to the side table. “Water. Meds. Don’t be a hero.”
“I’m offended by how little faith you have in me.”
“I have an exact, medically sound amount of faith in you.” She steps back to the doorway, a hand on the frame like it’s holding her up. Softer, almost hidden: “Sleep, Jason.”
The sound of my name from her mouth is a low-grade sedative with bad side effects. “Night, Lane.”
For a breath she hesitates in the warm trapezoid of light—profile, silhouette, the suggestion of a thousand things we don’t say. The door slides shut with a neatsnickthat puts a period at the end of the sentence.
The city flickers beyond the glass like it’s trying to Morse-code advice. My back throbs a little less against the wedge she built. My chest throbs a little more against the idea that she did. I flip to my side, rearrange the blanket for the tenth time, and tell my body to take the win. It answers with a restless ache that has nothing to do with vertebrae.
The suite goes museum-quiet—heavy carpet swallowing footsteps, the AC breathing like it’s trying not to be heard. I’m half asleep, half annoyed at the couch’s geometry when a laugh slips through the wall. Riley’s. Low, unguarded—the one that used to live under my skin.
Murmurs. Then words sharpen: “Sophie, I’m fine.” Softer. “No, really.”
I unlock my phone to keep from knocking on the wall. The screen blinds me. Thumb hovers over her name—still pinned at the top like a bruise.Did you eat?Delete.We need to talk.Delete.I’ll take the floor if it helps.Pathetic. Delete.
“Don’t,” she says through the wall. My heart jumps like she heard me think. “I know what you’re going to say,” she adds—to Sophie, not me. “It’s just a room. It’s just a night.”
Just a nightlands like ice water. I set the phone on my chest and count ceiling seams, push breath in and out like my lungs are stubborn rookies.
