When I didn’t stop it.
I’m not proud of how fast I wanted it.
I’m not ashamed either.
I just…don’t trust anything that happens at two in the morning after you’ve watched someone you love hit a hospital bed.
Sloane shifts, her shoulder brushing my chest. She makes a small sound—half sigh, half something else—and my body reacts like it didn’t get the memo that this is complicated.
I go still.
Not because I don’t want her.
Because I do.
Because that’s the problem.
I ease my arm out from under her slowly and sit up. My knee twinges—an old ache that’s more warning than pain now. I don’t sleep in the brace anymore, not at home, not unless I overdo it. But the hospital means long walks and hard floors, and I’ve learned the hard way that adrenaline makes you stupid.
Sloane doesn’t wake. Thank God.
I grab my shirt from the chair and pull it on quietly, then slip into the hall and pull her door shut behind me until it clicks.
The house smells like lemon cleaner and yesterday’s fear.
The living room is still staged with things that don’t belong—folded equipment, boxes, a shower chair leaned against the wall like someone left a threat here overnight.
I look at it for half a second.
Then I look away.
The kitchen is dim; the only sound is the hum of the fridge. I open cabinets I’ve opened a thousand times and start the coffee because it’s something I can do that doesn’t require thinking.
The machine gurgles, loud in the stillness, and the smell hits right after—dark and warm and normal.
Normal is a trick.
Still, I pour one mug.
Then another.
I add creamer to the second without thinking because if Sloane doesn’t drink something, she’ll run herself into the ground and call it discipline.
I’m rinsing the spoon when I feel her before I see her.
She’s in the doorway, wearing my sweatshirt. Hair shoved into a messy knot, face washed but still tired, eyes sharp like she woke up and remembered she’s not allowed to fall apart.
Her gaze flicks to the second mug.
Then to me.
“Did you sleep?” she asks.
I shrug. “Enough.”
She stares like she knows that’s not true.
I don’t give her the chance to argue. “Go shower.”
