But he had not been disoriented. If anything, it was the beginning of him slowly coming around. He stopped pacing back and forth in front of the long bank of windows, and pointed. Then, he explained to her about the bell tower. About playing pretend, about the movie he remembered watching with Michael on an Easter weekend a long time ago, about calling his mother the morning they went to Versailles.
You’ll sleep, she thought as she listened. She thought it again over the next hour, as they stayed near the windows, as they watched the city together in a new way, wandered through it from above.You’ll sleep, she didn’t say, when he grudgingly agreed to lying down with her—“Five minutes,” she said. “Just untilIfallasleep”—even though, by then, she could see his eyelids growing heavy, his movements growing more careless.
“Go on vacation,” he murmured, maybe four minutes later, and by then she’d learned to wait before assuming disorientation. “You go on vacation, and take care of sick people.”
“You’re not sick,” she said back, and she thought the snort he made in response had a sense of humor in it.
In the end, he was asleep before she was.
Now, assured that he still was, she sank back into the bed, reaching for her phone. Before she drifted off last night, she’d changed the notification alert for texts on her phone to the same sound her pager app made, determined not to accidentally sleep through anything that might come: from Emily, from any of the MacKenzies, from Rosie, even.
But there had been nothing, and now—only four thirty a.m., to be fair—there was still nothing.
We just have to wait, she told herself, the same thing she told Griff, but it wasn’t so easy now. She wasawake, awake at four thirty, which everyone knew was like a witching hour for worrying about things, your personal laundry list of very stupid things, every insecurity or unsolvable problem or devastating mistake of your life, unless you were up to actuallydosomething. Without the immediacy of helping Griff, her brain whirred with everything she’d learned in the last few hours, and everything she still didn’t know.
The things Griffin told her…god.
The way Emily must be feeling. The wayMichaelmust be feeling.
Whether he would be able to see what Griffin had done for him.
Whether Emily would.
And even after everything—after that conversation withGriffin in the café yesterday, after realizing, well and truly, that shewasn’ta MacKenzie anymore—the silence of her phone still felt painful, or at least…revealing. Surely, someone knew something;someonehad heard from Em, or Michael, and maybe there had been some kind ofconsensusabout her and Griffin, maybe Jamie told everyone and they all thought…
“Layla.”
Ridiculously, she automatically slammed her eyes shut. Like he was going to scold her for being awake. Like she was actually going to try and fake it.
She opened them again. She said, “Yes?” in a way that soundedextremelyprim. Way too prim for being in his bed in nothing but her underwear and one of his excellent, nearly seamless black shirts.
He made that snort again. “I can hear you over there.”
“No, you can’t.”
He made a noise. A doubtfulHm.When he was waking up, the register of his voice was so much deeper, and a deranged vibration settled between her legs.After everything!she scolded herself.It’s not the time!
“What can you hear?” she finally said.
“Your mind.”
The flat tone of it was so unexpectedly funny that she had to press her lips together.Mind over matter, she thought, and almost laughed again.
“Come over here,” he said. In this huge bed, after everything last night, she’d stayed pretty firmly on her own side, worried about disturbing him. No part of her touched him now, and she hated that. But also, she didn’t want to hurt him.
She could hear him shifting in the covers.
“I’m okay,” he said. “Come over.”
What happened next was so…she did not have another word for it other than to say that it wasintimate—shifting toward him, saying,Where, the shared knowledge that a moment like this could not be automatic for them, the shame he seemed to let go of, enough that he could say,Not thereorHere, put your leg here. All this for something couples took for granted every night, every morning.
All this for acuddle.
The best one she’d ever had.
“Does it hurt?” she whispered, when they settled into it.
“No.” He pressed a kiss against the top of her head. She thought the kiss might be him silently adding,It doesn’t hurt enough to stop.
