“Bren,” she says.
He blinks in surprise. “No one calls me that.”
“Well, I do.” Elodie has her phone in her hand.
“Hey, I’m sorry about before.” He scrubs at his hair. “I didn’t mean to overstep—”
“Do you want to see a picture of my man?”
He doesn’t, she can tell by the way he winces and mumbles something about being late, but she pushes her phone at him anyway. He glances at it on reflex.
There is a pause as his brow furrows and he looks from the phone back to her.
Then he begins to smile, slow and delighted. It is like daybreak and open seas and the spill of brown sugar across her tongue.
“Well, shit.” He’s grinning like a fool now. “I can’t compete with this. Look at this little guy. I don’t stand a chance.”
Amusement plays a wry game in her eyes; she keeps the smile tucked in the corner of her mouth. The idea of a single mother doesn’t revolt him.
“He’s five,” she says. “He’s the only person in my life.”
why are you still talking to him this is pointless he’s still American and will leave and you’re throwing yourself at some boy you just met with feelings that aren’t real—
“Would he let me take you for a drink sometime?” Bren says.
“Bren,” she says. “Don’t be a coward.”
Eagerness flashes in his eyes and the way he leans into her is shaped with untamed yearning. “Can I take you out right now?”
“You don’t even know my name.”
“Give it to me?”
Her lungs are full of hummingbird wings and she wants this; she wants something good. She lets the pause stretch, the tease making her eyes bright.
“Elodie.”
SIXTEEN
Her eyelids have been peeledopen, the pressure behind her sockets like two fingers squeezing an overripe cherry tomato. She lies in bed in the dark, her lungs filling with a nameless inky terror as her gaze fuses to the ceiling. Unblinking. All she can do is stare at the mass of dark spreading above her like a water stain. Except, this stain has a mouth rimmed with a thousand teeth, a forked tongue slowly snaking down and down as hot, lurid saliva drips off the sharpened tip.
The tongue is an inch from her blown-wide eyes. She can’t move. The scream is in her throat, her body seized in terrified paralysis.
I need to wake up, wake up wake up wake up up up up—
Air slams into her lungs and she sits bolt upright with a trembling cry, her hand reaching out for the slope of Bren in the dark. He mumbles into his pillow, barely stirring as she digs fingernails into his shoulder.She wants to slap him. To wrench him from the bed and force him to look up at themonster—
Except, when she slowly tilts her chin to the ceiling, there is nothing in the dark. Just the smooth expanse of the ceiling.
Her eyes feel burned dry, her heartbeat still slamming against her ribs at full throttle, and she can’t stop shaking. A nightmare, of course. But she should check on Jude. What if the thing has moved to his ceiling? What if the mouth has opened beneath his bed?
Elodie hurries through the halls, feeling her way with numb feet on cold floorboards as her heart lurches at every creak, every hiss of wind, every vicious shape hovering in the corner that turns out to be nothing. She is soundless, as if she’s peeled a fresh skin to wear out of the shadows. Restful sleep is an untethered concept.
She must see her child.
She must be there when he needs her.
Moonlight touches the edge of the arched windows in the hallway and makes her fingers look like ghostly claws on the nursery doorknob. She twists, her breath held, but part of her doesn’t mind if he wakes because then he will cry and need comfort and she will be right there to give it.
