Page 34

"Twenty minutes."

"Okay." He closes his eyes. "I'll stay up with you."

"You don't have to."

"I'm already up."

We stay like that. Me in the chair with the ice, him in the bed with his eyes closed, the fountain running outside. After ten minutes, his breathing slows and evens out and I know he's asleep for real this time, because he's started talking. In French. Something about bread.

I stay in the chair until the ice is water. Then I stay a little longer.

It's past midnight. By his rules, that makes it a new day.

"Goodnight, Rémy," I say. Not loud. Just enough to count.

Chapter Eight

RÉMY

When I wake up, he's still in the chair.

The ice bag's on the carpet in a puddle, and his leg is still up on my pillow, and his head's tipped back against the wing of the chair with his mouth a little open. The light coming in around the curtains is gray and early. The fountain's still going.

He looks younger asleep. That's the first thing. The line between his eyebrows is gone, and his face isn't holding onto anything. He looks like the guy on the fan wiki, the photo from his draft year, before the broken nose and the scar and whatever else happened in the seventeen years in between.

The second thing is that he looks exhausted. Not tired. Exhausted, down in the bones, like a house somebody's been living in too long without fixing anything.

I lie there and look at him. Rule eight says no photos. It doesn't say anything about looking.

His phone buzzes on the desk. Once, twice, three times. He doesn't wake up.

I get out of bed and go over and pick it up, only so it'll stop buzzing. I'm not snooping. The screen lights up in my hand and I see the name before I can not see it.

Saul: Call me before practice. Her side came back on the house.

Saul: It's not good.

Saul: Owen, call me.

I put the phone back down on the desk, face down, the way he always leaves it.

"You read it," he says behind me.

I turn around. His eyes are open. He hasn't moved.

"It was buzzing," I say. "I was making it stop."

"You read it."

"I read three lines. They weren't very good lines." I cross my arms. It's cold in here with the AC. "Who's Saul?"

"My lawyer."

"What's wrong with the house?"

"Nothing's wrong with the house." He takes his leg down off the bed, slow, and I watch his face go tight when the knee bends. "She wants it. I told him to give it to her. He won't listen."

"Is it a nice house?"