“No,” I say. “If I’m going to sleep, you’ll be right beside me.”
Aurora goes impressively still. The way she’s crouching, she reminds me of a black and white cat with the dark sweatsuit and that pale hair of hers. Though I never met her, I know her mamma was half-Ukrainian, and that Aurora got most of her looks from her.
“You want me in the bed with you,” she echoes. Not quite a question, but a statement meant to repeat and clarify.
I actually think it’s going to be incredibly inconvenient to have her in bed with me, considering the way my body is currently reacting to hers. I haven’t slept beside anybody since before my own mamma died. I don’t think I even could fall asleep with anybody else in my bed.
Sleeping beside someone makes you vulnerable. If Aurora decided to steal my knife and stab me in the guts while I was snoozing, there wouldn’t be much of anything I could do to stop her. Not that I think she would, based on how traumatized she obviously is about Marco’s fate.
I think about it – let the scene play out in my head. What would happen if Aurora tried to hurt me, kill me? The girl I saved when we were kids, going on to end my life more than twenty years later.
I don’t feel anger or fear or any real desire to stop her. I suppose if I were to let anybody stab me, it would be her.
Or Elio, I guess. He’s the only reason I’m alive right now. He let himself burn in that fire so that I didn’t have to. While I don’t think my life is worth shit-all in the grand scheme of things, I owe whatever value it holds to him. And I’ve devoted myself to his rule as a result.
But the devotion I feel for Aurora isn’t what I feel for my brother. It isn’t like anything I’ve ever felt for anyone.
“Yes, you’ll be in bed with me,” I tell her. “I need to know where you are at all times.”
“I promise I won’t do anything,” she says, tense. “I won’t go anywhere or talk to anyone. I don’t even have my phone! I’ll just sit here.” She grips the arms of the chair, as if to demonstrate where it is she promises to remain. Even from here, I can see her polished fingernails digging in. Again like a cat, the way one digs its claws in when you try to lift it up or move it when it doesn’t want to go.
“No good,” I tell her. “Bed’s big enough for both of us. Get in it.”
Weariness is definitely pulling at me now. Though I am a deep sleeper, I don’t typically need too many hours of rest in a row. But I drove basically all night to get here, and I will need to close my eyes, at least for a bit, to continue to function properly. To be sharp enough to take care of her. To not make mistakes.
She looks at the bed like it’s a pit of snakes.
Or an ocean that means to drown her.
She’s not going to come willingly.
Wordlessly, I grasp one of the items from my bag. A set of handcuffs. I find such a thing useful from time to time. It’s quicker to snap onto somebody’s wrists than rope when I need to restrain them.
Aurora’s eyes go huge. But too bad for her, she’s not as fast as a real cat. When she tries to launch off the chair, I catch her about the waist with one arm, deftly snapping one of the cuffs onto her left wrist.
“You’re going to cuff me to the bed?” she says on a harsh whisper. Based on the outrage in her expression, I think she’s doing everything she can not to shout in my face. She can go ahead and shout if she wants to. Doesn’t seem like there’s anybody in the rooms on this side of the building.
Nobody else would hear her.
“No,” I grunt, dragging her toward the bed while she bucks and fights my hold. “I’m not cuffing you to the bed.”
Before she can wriggle away, or do something desperate like bite me, I snap the remaining cuff onto my right wrist. When she next goes to flail her left arm, she meets the new resistance and gasps.
“You’re cuffing us together?” she pants. She stares down at our wrists, held a mere few inches apart. Then, she gives her left wrist an experimental tug. It only goes as far as I let it. “Why?” she asks. “I just promised you I’m not going to do anything or go anywhere! Do you think I’m lying?”
“No.”
I don’t think she’s lying. But I don’t trust what she’ll do, which decisions she’ll make, when she’s left alone for too long. She’s a good person. In the silence of my sleep, her guilt will keep on creeping in, like the slow, inevitable seep of blood from a wound. And she might do something fucking stupid or dangerous as a result.
She’s already done one dangerous thing.
She called me.
My eyes are gritty from keeping them open for more than twenty-four hours straight. Aurora resists me the entire way to the bed, but she’s too slight, too weak, for it to make much of a difference. When she was first in the bathroom, before she puked, I changed into fresh clothes, putting the potentially blood-spattered ones in a sealed bag inside my pack. Other than kicking off my boots, I fall into bed fully clothed now, bringing her down with me. She lands awkwardly, half on top of me. Through the plush fabric of her clothing, I feel the delirious weight of her. The curves of her chest pressing into mine. Her face is flushed, and she’s breathing hard.
Like we’ve just been fucking.
She scrambles off of me, moving as far to the side of the bed as she can, as far as the handcuffs will let her. I let her take my arm with her a bit, give her the space she so obviously desires. She tries to roll onto her side and away from me, but this results in her torso being weirdly twisted, her arm pulling back towards the centre of the bed. And me.
