I lie back down on my side and curl up under the thin comforter. Maybe it has to do with however he got that scar. The childhood accident and how they lost his brother.
A piece of him that he won’t let me see.
“Yeah,” he finally mutters.
“Does that happen often?”
“Not lately,” he says.
No. It can’t, I realize. I’ve slept in the same bed as him for over a week, and I haven’t noticed anything.
He looks back at me, a neutral expression on his face. It looks like a mask. Like he’s hiding any number of emotions behind it. The only remnant of what just happened is his flushed skin and the tight clench of his jaw.
I wonder if this is connected to why he fights sometimes, driving at night to places he has no business being.
He turns back to face the dark windows.
I sit up and wrap my arms around my knees. “It sounded like you were in pain,” I say.
It’s not the question I want to ask.What did you dream about?He seems like someone who’s never scared. Has everything under control.
Rafe pushes off the bed and walks across the room. He rolls his shoulders, like there’s coiled energy in him from whatever he dreamed of. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But it might?—”
“Remember how we don’t talk too much about your panic attacks? This is one of those things.”
“All right,” I say. “Do you want to talk about something else?”
He turns to look at me, and there’s a scathing look on his face. Somehow I know it’s not really meant for me. He hates that I’ve seen this.
Finally a way we can relate.
“Like what?” he asks.
“Anything. Something to take your mind off it. Tell me what you would do now if you were alone.”
He stands still in the middle of his bedroom. He seems just as likely to leave with a slammed door as he does stepping into the shower. Actually replying to me seems like a quickly dwindling possibility.
I stare at him.
He stares at me.
But then he sighs and turns back toward the dark windows. “I don’t have a protocol. Yes, yes. Make your joke about that. Me, playing things by ear.”
“I have seen you now, you know. Being more relaxed.”
“Sometimes I go swim laps. When I’m in Paris, I go for a walk.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“Yes,” he says.
“That seems unsafe.” My voice comes out soft in the room. Maybe it’s the darkness or what I’ve just witnessed, but I feel an aching inside. Like the threat of loneliness that I can usually keep at bay threatens to swallow me whole.
He looks over at me. “I can handle myself.”
“Oh. Yeah. I’ve seen that.”
