I chuckle as I climb back into bed, throwing one leg and an arm over him.
“Did you sleep okay?” I can’t imagine he feels rested, even though he hadn’t actually woken up from his dreams all night.
“Yeah, as good as it gets.”
“Is it always that bad?”
He turns over under my limbs to face me. “What do you mean?”
Fuck, does he not know he talks in his sleep? “You were just talking in your sleep a lot tonight.”
I can see in his eyes that this is news to him.
“You said ‘tonight.’ Have I talked on other nights too?”
“Ender, you’ve talked in your sleep almost every time you’ve slept in my presence.” There are those confused brows again.
“Even on the video calls?” The concern in his tone is growing with every question.
I nod and cup the back of his neck. “Don’t get in your head about it. It’s not a big deal, I promise.”
When he closes his eyes, I pull him in closer and press my lips to his forehead.
“How much do you know?” he whispers into my chest,
“Nothing more than you dream about your parents a lot.”
The silence lasts way too long, but he hasn’t fallen back asleep yet. “Do you want to talk about it?”
More silence.
“You don’t have to, Bean.”
He interrupts my attempt to reassure him as our lips connect. “My parents were drug addicts.”
I’m not surprised by this information. It was one of my assumptions from the things he mumbled while dreaming.
“Well, they weren’t always addicts. It started when I was eight or nine.” His breath whooshes out into the crook of my neck before he continues. “They weren’t that bad, I guess, until a few months before my tenth birthday.”
The muscles in his back twitch just enough for me to notice. I massage them softly and offer some encouragement by nuzzling into his hair.
“That was the last birthday party I had. It was such a disaster.” He huffs—apparently, his disbelief hasn’t faded. “It was just my parents’ friends there, except…”
I don’t know who moves first when I roll on my back and he wraps himself around me, his arms tucked under mine with his hands gripping my shoulders.
“Except who, Ender?” I whisper.
“Matthew Rogers.”
Slowly, the dots begin to connect, and things start to make a little more sense.
“So, you went to elementary school with him?” I ask. This one, I can’t figure out on my own. “But he said you went to high school together. It seemed like he remembered you fondly.”
“Matt’s parents were so angry when they picked him up. By that time, everyone had stopped using the bathroom to shoot up or whatever their drug of choice was.”
It breaks my heart more when I feel his body trembling against mine.
“We stayed in my room the whole time. When the doorbell rang, we ran to get it before his parents came in, but it was too late—they let themselves in.”
