He shifted on the couch, wincing when the springs jabbed his hip. When he sat up, the flimsy blanket dropped down his chest and pooled at his waist.
Every muscle in his back complained. Most of it was from the road, but some was from the night before.
Disclosing everything to Roz had left him hollowed and raw.
He blinked…nothing.
Again, hopelessness tried to settle in. He eased off the couch and dropped to his knees.
He pressed his palms together and his voice came out cracked, barely more than breath.
“Our Father…who art in heaven…” The familiar words scraped out of him.
“Thy kingdom come…Thy will be done…” He swallowed hard, chin quivering.
He opened his hands, let them fall to his thighs, and exhaled slowly, anchored for what he wished was more than a fleeting moment.
Gage grunted as he got to his feet. He stretched and popped the kinks in his upper body as his bladder screamed for relief.
He skimmed his fingers along the arm of the couch, counting the steps in his head like he’d done five times already in the middle of the night.
“A few more feet, then a hard right. I left a towel on the sink,” Roz called from the other side of the apartment.
Gage lifted his hand in acknowledgment. The hallway narrowed around him, the slight echo changing as the walls tightened.
He brushed his hand along textured plaster until it hit the cold edge of the bathroom doorframe.
The tile under his bare feet was freezing and a little sticky. He found the toilet, took care of business, then groped for the sink.
His knuckles bumped smooth ceramic—the faucet—on top was a folded towel and a crinkled half-used tube of toothpaste.
It all made him huff a short, incredulous laugh.
This was his life now.
He ran the water and splashed it on his face until he felt more awake. He squeezed a stripe of toothpaste onto the damp towel and scrubbed his teeth.
He wasn’t sure how much sleep he’d gotten, but his brain felt wired instead of foggy. Restless. Ready to do something. But he had no idea what.
He toweled off and found the door again, following his footprints back.
Roz’s apartment wasn’t big—he said it was about five hundred, thirty square feet—but it might as well have been a maze with all the unknown angles.
He walked down the hall and into the main room, his bare toes brushing a throw rug that was three steps from the couch, fifteen from the kitchen. The air was warmer there, saltier from the scent of greasy bacon and the pungent tang of coffee that’d brewed too long.
A chair scraped.
“Right here, PK,” Roz said, knocking on his two-seater kitchenette table.
Gage followed the sound until his knee hit the edge of a chair. He gripped the back of it and lowered himself slowly.
“So…after everything that’s happened, I see you’re still praying.”
“Always. Day and night.” Gage said. “I won’t let this test take my faith.”
Roz hummed under his breath.
Gage angled his head toward him. “You remember the first time I prayed for you?”
