I slip my hands down his arms to tangle our fingers together over his stomach. For a few quiet moments I just count his breaths, feeling his stomach dip and rise with each deep inhale. The soft reminders that he’s alive here in my arms, that this isn’t all one big dream after he fell.
“Benji,” Nolan murmurs.
“Hmm?”
“I’m going to be okay.”
I squeeze my eyes tight to stop the tears. “I know.”
“Every decision is mine, not yours. You know that, right?”
I nod against his sleep-warm skin. “I know.”
“Can we go somewhere tonight? Just you and me?”
“Yes, angel. I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”
Nolan sighs happily as he snuggles deep into my arms. “I know, Benji.”
Nolan falls back asleep while snuggled into my arms, and I let him. I can’t explain why it feels so special that he lets his guard down only in my presence. Maybe it’s the caveman in me, I don’t know, but it feels like he knows I’ll protect him the best I can. If I could fight his dreams, I would. The room gets darker as the sun disappears, but Nolan practically glows like some sort of dying star as his eyelashes flutter against his cheeks in his sleep. I lovingly run my fingers through his slightly curled hair.
Careful to not wake him, I tug my phone out of my pocket and text Eli, asking him for help so I can sweep Nolan away oncehe awakes. Eli is of course eager to help, adding a million smiley faces to his text message.
He shifts awake after only a little while and turns his head so his cheek rests against my chest. A sleepy grin tugs at his lips and that’s when I know, deep in the pit of me, that I’m head over heels in love with Nolan. Not with the rockstar, not with the man who challenges and bites at every opportunity, but this soft, gentle man I see glimpses of when he’s most vulnerable. Because it is in this vulnerable moment that he shows himself to me so clearly. He’s bright and effervescent and I fear the hold he’ll have on me for the rest of our lives. He has the power to break me, I can only hope he won’t.
“Thought you were going to take me somewhere,” Nolan whispers, voice still sleep-rough.
“I am. Thought I’d let you get a little more sleep in though.”
“Tired of sleeping.”
I chuckle at the irony and he throws a dopey sort of grin up at me. My heart does that dizzy thing again it only does when Nolan smiles at me without a wall of barbed protection. I roll out of bed, carefully tugging him along with me. I leave him standing by the bed for a moment as I tug another hoodie out of my bag for myself, because I need him, and want him to stay cozy inside of my other hoodie. I like when he wears my clothes and I like when he smells like me.
Nolan quietly follows me downstairs toward the truck. Without a word, he climbs into the passenger seat because again he trusts me to take him somewhere safe, to not lead him somewhere that he’s too afraid to follow. This weight of responsibility when it comes to Nolan is heavy, but I hope that at some point I’ll learn to handle it better.
A happy grin flits across my lips when I notice the pillows and blankets in the bed of the truck. Thank God for Eli. The air is chilly as I climb into the truck, so I flick the heat on as I headaway from Colby’s land. We both shiver in the cab of the truck, but it only takes ten minutes of driving for it to warm up, and for the windows to fog up slightly.
The pin with directions from Eli leads us even deeper into the country. Stars always twinkle brighter in the winter. Everything gets darker and it reminds me so much ofhomethat my heart hurts a little. I don’t exactly miss the commune, but I miss that feeling of having somewhere that was home. I’ve spent so much of my adult life traveling, that my heart has never settled somewhere. Clay Springs oddly feels like a good, solid place to lay a foundation. I glance over at Nolan in the dark of the cab to find him already looking at me.
His eyebrows are slightly furrowed and there’s a slight pout on his lips. “You looked sad just then.” He reaches out to touch the corner of my mouth just as I turn back to watch the light gray asphalt lit up by the headlights. “Why were you sad?”
“I was just thinking about home… I don’t have much of one anymore.”
“Not the commune with the moms?”
I shake my head softly. “No. That’s more of theplacekind of home. Not the… not the firm idea of home. Does that make sense?”
Nolan hums in agreement. “I had a home once. My great-grandmother… she felt like home. She died when I was a teen, so I ended up in foster care. Let me tell you, teens don’t fare well in the system. People rarely want teens. So I spent the last two years in a group home just waiting it out. Then, well, everyone knows the story, at seventeen I posted the video on YouTube and blah blah blah.”
“I didn’t know about your grandma,” I tell him softly.
Nolan waves his hand around, obviously feeling emotions he doesn’t want to talk about. “My parents were young when they had me and had a lot of addiction issues. They droppedme off with my mom’s grandma and that was that. My great-grandmother was kind and loving, I had a good decade with her. She was religious and that was hard but… she was never mean.”
“Do you remember your parents?”
I can feel Nolan tense despite not even looking at him. Quiet fills the truck as Nolan considers my question.
“Mom was kind,” Nolan whispers, sounding oddly defeated. “I don’t know why she didn’t want me. Grandma never really said. I haven’t heard from them since I became famous, so I don’t even know.” Nolan pauses and takes a deep breath. “They could be dead for all I know.”
