Outside, the fog sits thick against the window.
Neither of us speaks but neither of us sleeps either, and we both know the other is awake, but somehow that's enough.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ugh, I can’t sleep.
I can tell by the way Enzo sits in that chair, too still to be resting, his breathing too controlled to be anything close to unconscious. I lie in the bed with my eyes closed for a while but finally I give up and open them and look at him in the dim amber light of the lamp we left on low.
He's watching the door with that focus he has, the kind that he has on anytime he looks at me. It doesn’t waver, doesn't drift, just stays locked on the thing he's decided matters most.
"You're not sleeping," I say into the quiet.
He doesn't startle, doesn't turn immediately, just shifts his very focused eyes from the door to me with the unhurried patience of someone who knew I was awake the whole time.
"Neither are you."
"I tried."
"So did I."
We look at each other across the small motel room and something about the honesty of it, the simple acknowledgment that neither of us can turn our brains off tonight, makes the space feel smaller and more intimate.
"You could sit on the bed," I say. "The chair can't be comfortable."
"The chair's fine."
"Enzo."
He looks at me for a long moment, then stands and crosses to the bed, sitting on the edge of it leaving enough space between us but close enough that I can feel the shift in the mattress when he settles.
We sit quietly for a moment.
"Tell me something," he says.
"Like what?"
"Anything. Something I don't know. That might make you sleepy."
I consider that, running through the catalogue of things he doesn't know about me, things I've kept close and quiet for years because saying them out loud makes them real in a way I'm not always prepared to handle.
"The basement," I say, and the words feel like stones in my mouth—heavy, jagged, and impossible to swallow.
What… What am I doing?
I feel him go still beside me.
The shift is subtle, but I’m tuned in to him now, vibrating at a frequency I didn't know I possessed. "You asked," I continue, my voice sounding thin, like a thread about to snap. "You wanted to know what happened."
"You don't have to?—"
"I know I don't have to."
I pull my knees up to my chest and wrap my arms around them, trying to make myself small enough to disappear into the fibers of the duvet. If I’m small enough, maybe the memory won’t be able to find me.
But it’s already there.
Suddenly, the air in the room feels too thick to breathe.
