“Don’t sue me.”
He chuckles. “You couldn’t pay, anyway.”
I blow a lazy raspberry. “I could pay.”
The stairs whine in protest, and Rhaz has to duck to fit in the passageway, but we make it up to the apartment. He carries me to my room and nudges my bedroll with his foot until it unfolds enough for him to set me down. I pull him to the floor with me and curl into him closer.
“It felt happier,” he says.
I nod. “It did.”
“It felt like…sanctuary.”
The admission knocks the air from my lungs. It’s such a huge word, to make something so important for someone. I gave him a safe place just by singing. He’s done it for me, too.
I nestle into him deeper. “You’ve helped ground me through panic attacks, so I guess you’re my sanctuary, too.”
He sighs deeply, his fingers grazing along my scalp, then down my neck to my back. Tension eases out of my body at the motion, and he repeats it again, and again.
“I’m sorry I didn’t call for you. I didn’t want you to get in trouble,” I say, drowsiness pulling out my thoughts.
His lips ghost over the crown of my head in a gentle kiss.
“I know.”
“How long until you’re free?”
“Not long,” he murmurs. “I have a parole hearing in twenty days.”
I look up on a gasp. “Days!”
He hushes me, kissing my eyelids and holding me tighter. He looks at ease. At peace. Like nothing can touch him.
Just under three weeks isn’t long. If he’s released, we could be together anywhere.
“Do you need help?” I ask.
I want to be part of the solution for him. I want him to be free of the chains that bind him to this place, even if he has made it his home. Maybe he wouldn’t want to “go out,” but I’d like totake him anyway. There are just too many things to see and do out in the world to be trapped in one place.
He strokes my hair. “I’m well prepared.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
He chuckles. “You can rest.”
“But, I mean, for your hearing?”
“You have your own worries right now, Firecracker. You need to take care of yourself, and your family.”
“But…”
You feel like family.
“No buts, Jiahui, or I will spank yours,” he says.
I giggle like a silly girl and I know for sure I’m beyond exhausted. I let my eyes close and I breathe him in. His heat is a balm against the chilly fall air that seeps through the frame of the old window. It’s like slipping into a hot bath after a long, cold day.
He begins to hum. Not his sad song, but the happier one I created from it. I tuck my arms against my chest and place my hands on him, soaking up more of his heat and easing into the vibrations of his soul. This is how I want to fall asleep for the rest of my life.
