“Would if I could.” I palm my stomach with my free hand. “But the couch is terrible and my back is killing me and every time I close my eyes, I just…” I trail off.
“Just what?”
“Think about all the ways this could go wrong. All the ways we could lose.”
I feel him move beside me. The movement sends a whisper of warmth across the inch of space between our bodies.
“You’re scared.”
“Terrified,” I correct him. “Aren’t you?”
“Every goddamn second.”
The honesty in his voice undoes some essential tether in me. Some wall I’d been propping up with stubbornness and sleep deprivation. It crumbles, brick by brick, until I’m left with nothing but really sad, pathetic little truths.
I’m tired.
I’m scared.
And I don’t want to be alone tonight.
I take a breath. “Will you…?” I start, then stop. This is a terrible idea. A catastrophically terrible idea that I will almost certainly regret in the morning.
“Will I what?”
Too late to turn back now, I suppose. With a deep breath, I charge into the second half of a sentence I never should’ve started. “Will you come inside with me? Just until I fall asleep. I can’t—I don’t want to be alone with my thoughts right now.”
I can feel him weighing it. His thumb has stopped its wandering. His whole body has gone still.
“I’m not asking for anything more than that,” I hasten to add, before he can hurt my feelings. “Just stay with me until I fall asleep. Please.”
The soft, plaintivepleasemight as well be my beating heart on a silver platter.
“Are you sure?” he asks cautiously.
“Nighttime Eliana is sure. As for tomorrow’s version… Well, in the morning, everything goes back to how it was.”
“Okay.”
“I’m still furious with you.”
“I’m counting on it.”
There’s a ghost of his old humor in that. A faint but undeniable flicker of the Bastian who used to drive me absolutely insane in conference rooms and test kitchens and elevators that had no business being so charged with electricity.
In spite of everything, I smile at it.
We stand together. It takes me longer than it should, what with the freeloading tenant in my stomach and all. But Bastian waits. Doesn’t rush me. Doesn’t try to help.
Even though this is one of those times where I wouldn’t mind if he did, goddammit. Why can’t men just have telepathy? It would really solve a lot of the world’s problems if they did.
When we step back in, the house is quiet. Everyone else is asleep, lost in their own dreams or nightmares.
As we reach the pullout couch, Bastian stops. “Your back,” he says. “You said it was hurting?”
“It’s fine?—”
“Turn around.”
