We’re bedded down in Zeke’s apartment for the night. When he and Bastian got home after surveilling the location where Sage is being held, Yasmin took Z into his bedroom and shut the door.
I don’t think they’re having sex; I’ve heard them have sex before, and it is not a quiet affair by any stretch of the imagination. If I had to guess, I’d say they’re just touching each other softly, sharing breaths, confirming proof of life again and again and again, because one piece of evidence is never enough when it’s someone you love. The terrifying pause between your lover’s every inhale and exhale is reason to worry all over again.
I know how that feels.
But Bastian and I aren’t lying side by side in a bed, stroking each other’s cheeks and breathing each other’s air. I’m hunkered on an inflatable mattress on the floor that’s slightly deflating and sagging in the middle, turning me into an Eliana burrito.
Bastian was supposed to be sleeping on the couch. Instead, though, he’s seated at the kitchen counter. I can hear him scribbling with a pen, then the rip of paper as he tears off a sheet of the legal pad Zeke gave him, balls it up, and tosses it aside. His breath comes in angry, frustrated snorts.
It’s funny how attuned to him I am. I would’ve guessed that, after all these weeks apart, he’d feel like a stranger to me. I mean, I never really knew him all thatwell in the first place, did I? He had so many secrets. So many shadows cloaking the deepest parts of him.
But he’s not a stranger. Not really, no matter how hard he tries to be. I still feel myself sighing and fidgeting and grunting along with him, like we’re two radios on the same wavelength, and whatever frustrates him frustrates me, too.
Finally, I give up on sleep. It just ain’t happening for me right now. I get ready, then haul myself off the air mattress in the most ungainly fashion imaginable.
It’s getting harder and harder to do stuff like that, Herculean tasks like “sit up” and “tie your shoes.” My center of gravity is all wrong these days. It’s transitioned forward and down, like someone duct-taped a cantaloupe to my midsection and forgot to send the memo to my inner ear. My body is a stranger’s, rife with all these new aches and pressures and inconveniences that nobody warned me about. The motherhood books Yasmin hasbeen reading aloud to me at night spend a lot of time waxing poetic about “the glow of pregnancy” and “the miracle of life,” but they all skip right over the part where the simple act of getting vertical becomes a multi-step ordeal.
When I’ve won the battle, I follow the sound of Bastian’s restless energy to where he’s sitting at the kitchen counter. The tile is cold under my bare feet. I stub my toe on a barstool leg and swallow down a curse.
He doesn’t startle at my approach. I’m sure he just heard me coming. Or maybe he’s as attuned to me as I am to him.
“You should be sleeping,” I scold.
“Mm.”
“You’re no good to us or to Sage if you’re dead on your feet, Bash.”
“Mm.”
I sigh. So much for that plan of attack. I settle onto the stool beside him. The leather is cool through my thin sleep shorts. “What are you doing?”
His wintergreen scent calms me the second it hits my senses. When did that become my safe space, I wonder? My whole nervous system just sighs in relief, like it’s saying,It’s okay; you’re home now.
“Planning.”
“How detailed. Care to share a little more with the class?”
His frustration flares again. “It’s late, Eliana. You should be sleeping.”
“If you think that tactic will work on me any better than it worked on you, you’re highly mistaken, sir.”
He doesn’t laugh—I’m not sure he’s even capable of it these days—but I do feel his irritation recede a bit. “Fair enough. One of us is a pot and one of us is a kettle, that’s for damn sure.”
“Dibs on ‘kettle.’” I scoot my chair closer. “So, what’re you working on?”
I hear the repetitive click of his pen. In-out, in-out, over and over. “Trying to cross all my t’s and dot all my i’s. The building is a fucking death trap. There’s a way, I think, especially since we have the element of surprise… but nothing is guaranteed.”
“Show me.”
He pauses. There’s a hitch in his breath, his mind whirring as he weighs whether to shut me out again and keep on shouldering solo burdens that everyone keeps begging him to share. The pen keeps clicking.
In-out.
In-out.
“Bastian,” I say, “I’m not going back to sleep, and I’m not going to sit here uselessly while you brood like a damn gargoyle. So either you tell me what you’re working on, or I start making wild, unhinged, uninformed suggestions. Your call. I assure you all my ideas will be terrible.”
This puff of air is even closer to a laugh than the one before. Progress. Tiny progress, but still progress.
