‘I can’t go back to sleep,’ I force the truth into the dark. ‘I’m afraid he’ll be there in my dream.’
Scottie looks at me, his face half-shadowed. ‘I can make a cuppa.’
‘No.’ The empty sliver of space beside me is a joke. It’s an absurd ask on a single bed. But him walking out that door is so much worse than things getting weird.
‘Stay?’ My voice is barely a scratch on the silence.
Tonight, I’m choosing who enters my space. It isn’t weakness to ask for a wall when the ceiling is falling down.
He lets out a slow breath. ‘I’ll pull up the chair.’
‘No.’ I curl my knees up, opening a sliver of space. ‘Here.’
He looks at the narrow strip of duvet. ‘Ava. That bed is built for one person. I’m almost two.’
‘And I’m a little less than one.’ My teeth chatter in the quiet. ‘Please?’
Scottie looks at our hands, mine still trembling beneath his. He is running the calculation – awkwardness versus my nervous system collapsing.
He exhales. ‘Right. Okay, I’ll stay until you’re asleep. Budge up, then.’
I shift toward the wall and press myself against it to make room. The mattress dips substantially as he lies down behind me. Katie’s bed really is small.
Then his arm comes over my waist. A ballast that binds me to the here and now. His chest is a broad, warm barrier against my back. There is no space left as the bulk of his thighs sinks into the mattress.
It’s like being held by a mountain range.
I should be worried about being squashed, but my shameless, inappropriate brain wonders if he could crush a watermelon between his enormous thighs.
Probably.
‘Better?’ his voice rumbles against my neck.
‘Yeah. Even though you’re crushing me.’
‘I’m trying my best not to.’
In any other timeline, I would be mortified. I would be hyper-aware of the heat radiating off him, the intimacy of his knees tucked behind mine. I would be wishing I had found him earlier, before Nevin turned me into a knot of scar tissue.
But right now, I’m simply thankful for his existence.
I trace the landscape of his forearm, the ridge of muscle. ‘He was the room,’ I say. ‘In the dream.’
‘He’s not here, love.’ Scottie locks his arm around me. ‘And I take up a lot of room. There’s no space for him. Not even in your dreams.’
Fair point. Hard to argue with the literal size of him.
The cold ache of vigilance that usually lives in the marrow of my bones begins to thaw. ‘Goodnight, Bear.’
‘Night, Marzipan.’
Chapter 15
Scottie
My right side gave up two hours ago. The arm trapped under her head is numb, and a spring’s drilling into my hip. Katie never complained about this mattress, but my sister weighs nine stone. I’m eighteen stone of centre. Two of her.
Waking up feeling like I’ve been run over by a freight train is standard. The warmth radiating through my chest is new. Ava’s dead to the world, breath hitching slightly on the exhale. A tiny, uneven catch that shivers through my torso. Early light filters through the Velux window. Shifting to get some blood into my arm without waking her, I turn my head.
