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I’m about to attempt another deflection when she surprises me.
“Just text me tomorrow,” she says.
It’s abrupt enough to shut my mouth. It’s strangely deflating, like I wanted her to fight for me. I sometimes forget that saving Paul isn’t anyone’s real occupation.
Except maybe Reggie—who I really do need to call.
“I will.”
“You better.”
After the call, the house gets too big. Physically, it’s exactly the same—white walls, blue tile, pool light swimming across the ceiling—but now Riverside is inside it.
Jessica’s voice. Reggie’s unread messages. Baxter not eating. Barret eating through emotional collapse for both of them.
All of it presses in at once. The house becomes less a retreat than a room where every unfinished thing has found my forwarding address.
I should text someone. I should answer emails. I should prove I’m still capable of responsible adulting, even without pants.
Instead, I walk down the hall.
Clint’s bedroom door is open.
That’s become one of the strangest details of my life. Our doors stay open. No screens or secret rooms. No usernames.
He’s in bed, one arm over his head, the sheet barely covering his hips.
His leg shifts when I enter, his knee pulling up and to the side. The details under the sheet roll with it, and I can see the outline of his erection slide along his thigh.
The sight of him shouldn’t make the panic sharper. It does anyway.
And still, I can’t ignore the outline in the sheets. It may be the one thing that can pull me back from the flood before it drowns me.
I stop at the end of the bed. Clint’s still asleep or close to it, mouth soft, face younger without attitude holding it up.
I should let him rest.
I kick the mattress instead. Not hard, but enough to make his eyelids flutter. When he sees me standing there, he jerks awake like I’m holding a weapon.
“What the fuck?”
“Sorry.”
He pushes up on his elbows, abs flexing, sheet slipping lower. “Is the house on fire?”
“No.”
“We’re being robbed?”
“No.”
I gesture vaguely toward him. Toward the sheet. Toward the part of him hidden under it badly enough to make my point both obvious and humiliating.
“Do you want another one?”
Silence.
Clint stares at me.
