Silence.
I press my palm flat against the wood. "I'm going to give you thirty more seconds and then I'm going to break this door off its hinges, and I want you to know I mean that literally and I will feel no remorse about it whatsoever."
A pause.
Then: "You are such a brute."
But I can hear something underneath the words, something lighter than anything she's sounded like in the last hour, and a second later the lock clicks and the door opens and she's standing there in an oversized shirt, her hair loose, her eyes slightly red but her chin up in that way she carries herself when she's decided she's done falling apart.
She looks at me. Then at my hand still braced against the doorframe like I was genuinely prepared to go through with it.
She laughs.
It's small and reluctant and clearly against her will, a short exhale that turns into something real before she can stop it, and she shakes her head like she can't quite believe me.
"You were actually going to break it."
"I told you I would."
"You're insane."
"I've been called worse." I step back, giving her space. "You okay?"
She considers the question honestly, the way she does when she's deciding between the real answer and the easy one.
"I'm confused," she says finally. "About everything. Very, very confused."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
ENZO
She just looks at me and says, "I don't want to be alone tonight." She doesn't ask. She doesn't explain.
I look at her.
"Not like that," she adds, and the way she says it is careful and honest and completely without performance. "I just don't want to be alone."
I sit on the bed with her. I pull the blanket up over her and tuck it in around her and then I straighten up and reach for the lamp.
Her hand finds mine in the dark.
Not grabbing. Just her fingers closing around my hand, light and uncertain, like she's not sure she's allowed.
I go still.
"Stay," she says quietly. Just that. One word.
I look down at her in the dark and she's looking back up at me and I can see her already second-guessing it, already preparing to let me off the hook, already starting to loosen her fingers around mine.
I catch her hand before she can pull it back.
I hold it for a moment. Feel the smallness of her fingers. Feel her exhale.
"Shift over," I say quietly.
She moves toward the wall without a word and I then lie down on top of the covers because getting under them would be too much, and the dark settles around us, and neither of us speaks.
Her hand is still in mine.
