He was at her side in a second, looped her arm around his shoulders. “You flopped right out of bed.” A lie.A lie.He was so tired of telling them. “Poorly done, Wednesday.”
“Hmm.” She was lost in the haze of sleep, her face tucked into his chest. Her breath curled, low and slow, against his sternum. He climbed into bed alongside her, conscious of the ticking clock, the sinking moon, the pink flush of her cheeks. The shadows crowded, drawing near, and he felt like one of them—clinging to her, desperate and afraid.
He was aware of the irony. Aware of how selfish he was. Seeking comfort from her when it was his fault, his fault. But then he’d spent his entire life drawing as close as he could to her warmth. He couldn’t stop now.
“I think I fell out of bed,” she murmured, and he remembered, then, that she couldn’t hear—that she’d left her implant on his bedside table. Yawning, she folded herself into the curves of him, feeling for her backside. “I’m going to have a horrible bruise tomorrow. I can already feel it.”
Delaney woke to sunshine in the middle of the night.
The hour was late. She could feel it in the muddy silence of her head, the tired sludge of her bones. Late, and yet her skin was painted gold, gilded in an inconceivable sunrise blind that set her scrabbling back from its brilliance. Her heel struck the heavy tin of a can and she wobbled, teetering hard into a wall. Every part of her felt sticky and wet and cold. She shaded her eyes and peered into the sun, her heart rate climbing. There, in the unwavering miasma of light, stood the tapering shadow of a man.
The sun clicked off.
An overhead light clicked on. Delaney was left staring into the cooling bulb of a painter’s lamp. In front of her was Colton, his irises ringed in white. His mouth was a hard, unsmiling line. Casting out her thoughts, she tried to piece together the detritus of her subconscious.
She couldn’t remember dreaming. She couldn’t remember waking.
Shifting, she found her ankles twisted in the paint-spattered linen of a drop cloth. Her skin was tacky, her bare arms cracked in plaster. She was in Colton’s T-shirt, Colton’s boxers, her skin smeared in paint like tar. She made a feeble effort to rub it away. The colors smudged deeper, ruining the white cotton of his shirt.
A pair of paint-free hands found her face, cradled her jaw. Her chin was guided up until her eyes met Colton’s. Brows pinched, he conducted a careful search of her, his fingertips coming away in shades of red and gold and black. Again and again, his gaze flicked to the wall over her shoulder.
“What?” she asked, and felt the scrape of her voice all through her. “What is it?”
Turning, she caught sight of the wall. Where the butterfly had once unfurled, golden and unfinished, there was now an angry ouroboros of black. Beneath it, she’d fingerpainted a single word in red.Sequestrum.
Her stomach bottomed out. Her knees wobbled.
“God, Colton. I’m so sorry—”
He brought his thumb to his chest in a five-fingered spread.It’s fine, he signed.It’s okay.
Her breath caught, and she frowned up at him. Her nerves were shredded paper. Her head was a heavy metal scream. “It’s not fine,” she said. “What about any of this is fine?”
His only answer was to fold her sticky hand into his and lead her out of the office. Into the hall, where they tracked painted footprints all through the pristine foyer. Into the upstairs bathroom, where he turned the valve on the shower until it spat water over the empty tile in a scalding rush. He stepped inside, drawing her in after him so that they were both standing, fully clothed, beneath the rainwater stream.
He didn’t speak. Instead, lathering a washcloth, he took hold of her wrists and set to work. He scrubbed between her fingers, where the paint had already begun to flake. Along her forearms, where colors ran in muddy rivers. Beneath her chin, where her pulse hammered so hard it became difficult to draw breath. She watched the water swirl black atop the drain and did her best not to cry.
Eventually, he finished, setting the cloth aside. Water drilling into her shoulder blades, she became too-acutely aware of the way his borrowed T-shirt clung to her in an opaque second skin. She didn’t bother trying to cover herself. There was a strange sort of comfort in knowing he could see her—in knowing she was there. Something corporeal. Something that took up space. The water fell and fell without sound, and she’d never felt less at home in her own bones.
“I don’t want this,” she said, unsure if he’d hear her over the rush of falling water. His dark eyes flicked to hers. His curls were dark Cs against his brow, his cheeks flushed in the heat. “Maybe Nate and the others went looking on purpose,” she whispered, “but I didn’t. I want it out.”
His only answer was to take the hem of her shirt and tug her to him, dragging her over the slippery tile. They collided, forehead to forehead, nose to nose, mouth to mouth. Water spilled over her tongue, and for a moment she thought he meant to kiss her. To swallow down whatever it was that beat inside her chest. She wished he would. She wished he’d drink it from her tears. Wished he’d bite it from her lips. Instead, he only drew her into an embrace. Her ringing head pressed against his sternum; his ruined mouth grazed her temple.
They stayed that way, twined together without a word, until her fingers pruned and the sun came up and the water ran clear and cold.
***
She was in the kitchen, halfway through her second mug of coffee, when Colton found her. The patch of sky in the window was a bright sapphire blue, the morning winter crisp, and she’d taken it upon herself to pilfer a sweater out of his closet. Now she perched, birdlike, atop a stool and sank deeper into the warm burgundy wool, watching him prepare himself a shake. He did it the way he did everything—in thoughtful, measured strokes. Checking his watch between intervals.
When the whir of the blender finally silenced, he peered at her across the granite island. His cheeks were flushed beneath the bill of his cap, his T-shirt dark with sweat. He looked, she noticed, nervous.
Quietly, he asked, “Do you trust me?”
“Not always,” she admitted.
The pinched corner of his mouth quirked in a half smile. “That’s fair. Would you trust me today? I need your help with something.”
“Okay,” she said.
