My bedroom is a nice place to wake up. When the bipolar charity found a tenancy that would suit my needs, they sent an art therapist over to help me decorate. The walls are white, and the ceiling is sky blue. If I’m lucky, when I open my eyes, it gives me a moment to forget whatever chaos I might face elsewhere.
This time, though, I wake with aching limbs and wet cheeks, and I know that somehow, the precious bubble of domestic bliss I’ve found with Aidan has come to an end.
I roll over with a suffocating sob building in my chest, bracing myself for a cold, empty bed. It isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever woken up to, but it’ll hurt the most, and I don’t know if I can bear it.
But I’m not alone. My flailing hands touch warm, solid flesh, and the world realigns.
He stayed.
I blink a thousand times. Pinch myself. Make myself bleed. But nothing changes. Aidan is stretched out beside me, face tight with pain, hand clamped on my shoulder, as though he can only sleep if he has me safe in his grasp.
Safe. I turn the word over in my fuzzy head. Try it for size, and it fits. I don’t know what I’ve done to carve worry lines into his rakish face, but with him next to me, I don’t feel safe—Iamsafe.
I can’t hide from his obvious pain though. I sit up, noting that I’m dressed in boxer shorts and a T-shirt that doesn’t belong to me. It’s big and black, which seems fitting, but it smells so wonderfully of Aidan that the lingering yellow in my brain prevails.
But my surge of happiness doesn’t last long. I lean over Aidan—he’s still in the shorts he wears to work and Bernard’s company polo shirt—and study his leg. His knee is swollen, as if there’s a giant blister under his skin. I touch it, and it seems to pulse beneath my fingertips. Aidan flinches. A sharp sound escapes him, and suddenly he’s wide awake.
“I’m sorr—”
Aidan is on me before the sentence completes. He bolts up right with a low growl and snatches my hands as I start to cover my face.
“Look at me,” he demands.
I obey, and his stormy gaze bores into me, flaying me open and examining every part of me he can reach.
“How’re you doing? Do you feel okay?”
I don’t know how to answer that question, so I kiss him, gently, a brush of lips that smooths some of the worry from his face.
He smiles a little, but his intense stare remains. “Talk to me,” he whispers. “Can I do anything for you?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. Whatever you need.”
“I need you to be okay.”
“I am.”
I flick a glance at his inflamed knee. “You’re not. And I reckon it’s my fault.”
“How do you reckon that?”
“You’re passed out fully clothed in my bed, and my blood feels like someone spiked it with electricity. There’s a needle mark in my arm, and I can’t decide if I want to cry or go and have breakfast at that pub that does fry-ups the size of a small bungalow.”
I’m wittering by the end of it, speaking so fast I can’t catch my breath. It’s at odds with the sedative-laced fuzz behind my eyes, and I hate myself so much I can’t catch the fresh tears that roll down my face.
Aidan wipes them away. “The needle mark is from some medicine your, uh, CPN—Rita, yeah, Rita gave you. And there’s nothing wrong with crying into your bacon sandwich, if it makes you feel better.”
“It doesn’t. And I haven’t got any bacon.”
“Yes, you have. I saw it in the freezer when I was looking for a bag of peas.”
“Peas?”
He eyes his leg. “My knee blew up last night.”
Something clicks in the tiny part of my consciousness that isn’t utterly self-absorbed. I spring from the bed, stumble, and steady myself.
