Chapter 12
Matt’s arm twitched beside me. I felt the heat of his body move away from mine, and I tightened my arms around him, not bothering to open my eyes.
I was still mostly asleep, and I didn’t want to lose the feeling of his body pressing against mine.
Then he jerked again. My eyes burst open.
Faint light came through the curtains, illuminating him enough that I could see stress etched onto his gorgeous face.
Every muscle in his body was tense, even as he twitched away from me.
“Matt,” I whispered. “Baby.” Another whimper, and alarm bells sounded in my head. “Matthew? Matt, wake up.”
It took a few more tries, a few more whispers of his name and gentle strokes of his muscular arms before his eyes fluttered open. Even in my dimly lit bedroom, I could see the panic. “No fire?” he whispered, his voice still thick with sleep.
“No fire,” I promised him. He turned in my arms and wrapped himself around me. Clung to me would probably be a better description of what he was doing. I stroked his messy brown hair and planted a kiss on his forehead. “Bad dream?”
“I couldn’t get out,” he told me. “The fire. It was in my room, and I couldn’t get out.
My ducks were laughing at me, and I could hear people trying to get to me.
Hear you trying to get to me. I couldn’t get out.
” His voice cracked, and I was taken back to the night in front of his building.
His voice had cracked then, too, and he’d clung to me just as desperately.
Like he was trying to prove to himself that I was real, that we both were.
“It’s okay,” I assured him. “There’s no fire. You’re safe. You’re at my place, and you’re safe.”
He shuddered in my arms, and I felt the warmth of his tears on my shoulder.
My heart ached for my beautiful boyfriend as he cried in my arms. I couldn’t do anything to help him other than whisper reassurances that he was okay, that he was safe, that even if there were another fire, his rubber ducks would not climb out of their bins and mock him.
I didn’t even know if I was helping him, or if I was whispering what I thought were sweet nothings but were just failing attempts at sweetness.
I was a little rusty on the whole boyfriend thing.
His body stopped shaking in my arms eventually.
His tears stopped. His breath evened, and before I knew it, he had fallen back asleep.
But I was wide awake. I couldn’t fall back asleep, even if it hadn’t been close to my normal wake up time.
My eyes were trained on his relaxed face, on the tear streaks on his red cheeks, and the way he looked so much younger when he slept.
I memorized the way the shadows shifted on his face as the sun rose and lit up the room, the small shifts as he slept, the little snores and snuffles he made.
I had never watched anyone sleep before.
In fact, I’d always thought it sounded creepy and boring, but it wasn’t.
Watching him sleep filled me with a calm and peace that I didn’t understand.
Maybe it was a remnant of his nightmare, of the way he woke up, or maybe I’d been more affected by the fire than I’d thought, too.
Matt didn’t mention his nightmare, and I didn’t know how to bring it up either.
I waited that entire day and the next one, but he seemed determined not to mention it.
Maybe he’d forgotten about it, or maybe he just wanted to forget.
I didn’t know what the case was, but I knew I needed to follow his lead on this one.
I kept an eye on him all weekend, but I didn’t notice any lingering effects of his nightmares.
There were no unsightly bags under his eyes.
He wasn’t getting up more in the middle of the night, and he didn’t seem to have any trouble falling asleep.
That, of course, could have been due to the fact that ever since we’d slept together Thursday night, he couldn’t keep his hands to himself.
For someone who claimed he didn’t usually hook up, he seemed to have an insatiable sex drive with me.
No wonder he passed out so easily at night.
Things shifted once the work week started.
Monday, he was still working on his laptop when I got home.
On Tuesday, the tension in his shoulders was almost palpable.
Wednesday, he was watching Glee. Unless things had changed since high school, that show was nothing but a red flag for him.
He watched it when he was stressed or anxious or pissed off.
He’d told me once that there was something almost soothing in the chaos, which I personally couldn’t understand.
When I was stressed out, the last thing I wanted was more chaos, but it seemed to work for him.
The fact that he didn’t turn it off when I got home was another red flag.
I suffered through two episodes while he tapped away on his computer, muttering under his breath, and barely acknowledging me or the bright yellow rubber duck sitting on the couch next to him, beak facing the couch.
When he slammed the lid on his laptop shut and swore loudly, I decided I could no longer ignore the big blaring musical elephant in the room.
I reached for the remote on the table and paused the show. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t do it,” he announced. “I can’t code anymore.
None of it makes sense. Nothing I do is working.
This duck,” he picked up the duck and glared at it like it had personally insulted his parents and his entire family line, “is useless. I need my ducks and my apartment, and I need to figure out—Fuck!”
I inched myself toward him on the couch and carefully rescued the duck from his hand. After I put it on the table, I took his computer and let it join the bright yellow bird. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Yes,” he snapped. “Except I don’t think you would understand. I want to talk to my ducks, but they’re trapped in my apartment, and I can’t get to them, and I have a deadline, and I’m going to pull my hair out of my skull.”
“Don’t do that, baby. You do not have the skull shape to pull off the bald look.”
“Noah!” he hissed. “That is not the point.”
“No, the point is you’re freaking out over nothing. You have always been amazing at what you do.”
“Until this project. I can’t figure it out, and it’s driving me up the wall,” he groaned.
I covered his hand in mine. “What can I do to help you?” Obviously, I couldn’t help him with the technical parts of his job, but there had to be something that I could do. I hated this feeling of helplessness, of not being able to do anything to support my boyfriend in his time of need.
“I just need to focus.” He looked over at his laptop and then back up at me.
His eyes traced slowly up my body, and I could almost feel it like a tangible caress.
“And I think you looking like that…” His voice trailed off.
“Any way you could go out and grab us dinner? I can try to be done by the time you get back? I just need to figure out this bit of code so I can reach my milestones.”
I tugged at the front of his shirt, pulling him closer to me so I could steal a kiss.
His mouth parted immediately, and I knew that if I wanted, I could fully distract him away from his project.
But that would be the opposite of helpful, even if it did help him relax.
I pulled away before the kiss could deepen before the inferno that liked to flare to life between us could consume us entirely.
“I am going to hunt and gather. You are going to do your code.” I gave him another quick kiss.
He moved after my lips, chasing them down.
I bounced off the couch with a laugh. “Nope, you’re going to code. I’ll be home later.”
Home.
I liked the sound of that, even if it was all temporary. It felt comfortable.
Except not for him.
An idea formed in my head. There were three key rings on the hook: mine, his, and the single key to his boat. He’d grabbed it when he’d gone to get his essentials the week before. I pocketed the boat key alongside mine and left Matt to his work.
Fifteen minutes later, I was pulling up in front of the marina.
One of the problems he’d listed were the ducks.
I couldn’t go back to his apartment and get one of the bins of ducks for him, but I knew where he had a few ducks.
I’d seen them the day we’d spent together, lining the shelf over the bed of the boat.
He had a few other comfort items there too, things that he might not have thought about but might make him feel a little more at peace at my place.
I drew in a deep breath as I stepped over the gap between the dock and the boat.
Without Matt’s hand to help me, the gap seemed terrifying and large.
I was convinced I was going to fall into the water all the way up until the point where both of my feet were firmly planted on the stern of his boat.
I used the key to unlock the sliding door and stepped on board.
It felt weird to be on Matt’s boat without him, like I was intruding on his private space. I needed to get in and get out.
So, of course, that was the moment my phone chose to go off.
I pulled it out of my pocket, expecting it to be Matt and for him to somehow know where I was.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Moira’s name scrawled across the screen instead of Matt’s.
“Question: is it breaking and entering if you have the key?” I asked after we got pleasantries out of the way and I made sure she wasn’t calling for any reason other than boredom on her walk home from her office.
“Context needed before I can render a verdict there, No.”
“Can I pretend your answer is just no?”
“Nope,” she answered, popping her lips on the P for added emphasis. “Spill.”