So she would be his island.
Audrey closed her eyes and let it wash over her too, clinging to him and pressing her heart to his while he wailed, the sound of it unearthly and uncanny. It vibrated through her, sent shivers down her spine, shook her to her core.
But what it didn’t shake was her resolve.
She sat with him, cried with him, kept silent, stayed strong and upright against him, held him tight and stroked his hair while he screamed everything he couldn’t voice, everything he’d been keeping wound tight inside for six long months, longer maybe, perhaps hadn’tevertruly dared unleash.
Eventually, Theo calmed.
He grew quiet.
He closed his eyes, his tears finally run dry, finally spent.
And when he buried his right hand in her hair to draw her forehead to his lips for an exhausted kiss, she didn’t feel it move at the back of her head.
His hand didn’t shake at all.
Instead, it stayed perfectly still.
For the very first time.
Nineteen
Swimming out ofher slumber was difficult.
Audrey’s eyes were so heavy, she couldn’t yet open them. But she could hear Theo somewhere nearby, keeping his voice low through the drone of the white noise machines.
“Okay, good. I’m glad you’re on board. Yeah, I thought it was a good idea too. I’m not overly thrilled, though, don’t get me wrong, but it feels better than the alternative.”
Her whole body was soheavy.
And so comfortable.
“Yeah, Audrey and I talked a lot about it last night. And that did help—it helpedenormously. I told her about the accident. All of it. Yeah, even that part. Thanks. Audrey? Oh, we’re doing great. Yeah, I’ll tell her—thank you, Amelia. I’m glad she was here too.”
Theo’s sheets felt like silk against her bare skin, slipping luxuriously along her legs as she shifted. His duvet was thick and heavy and made moving difficult, like last night when he’d first wrapped her up in it. But she finally managed to turn over and blink a little, squinting through the soft pinkish-orange light of the salt lamp cutting through the darkness.
He was sitting on the edge of the bed clad in his boxer briefs, his phone pressed tightly up against his ear, watch already on and glinting in the glow of the lamp. But when she moved, he looked over hisshoulder and caught her eye, immediately leaning back to grab her hand and curl his fingers into hers.
She was glad.
She needed to touch him too.
She’d missed him while she was asleep.
“Yeah, I think it would’ve been so much worse if she hadn’t been. I don’t know what I might have done.”
The corners of his wide lips twitched upward in the shadows, and he shifted his own body, rustling against the sheets while he laid back down next to her, holding the phone away from his mouth slightly so he could kiss her without too much trouble. It looked comically minuscule in his massive paw.
The phone dropped back down to his mouth again, and Theo settled his head on her pillow, his thick, dark waves tumbling roguishly across his forehead.
God, he was handsome.
To think he couldn’t see himself the way she saw him.
It was almost unfathomable.
“I’m open to it. I don’t want to lose anyone else. I’ve already learned that lesson once, and that was one too many times. I’ll propose it when I see her. I don’t know if she’ll go for it, though she did say she was willing to do anything to make things right. Uh-huh. Yeah, boundaries, I remember. I will.”
