Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Nevan
I wake up standing.
Always the first sign that shit has gone wrong.
It takes a few seconds before the rest of the information catches up with me.
The cold air, the damp smell of rust and oil, the hollow echo of my breathing bouncing off concrete walls that should have been torn down years ago.
I blink slowly as my brain comes back online and tells me I wandered to the abandoned mill outside of town again.
My hand is raised, and when I look down at it, I see a red marker clutched in my grip. The wall in front of me is layered with years of graffiti—tags stacked over tags—with one large, freshly drawn word on top of it all.
STUPID
I stare at it, then let out a dry huff. “No shit.”
I’ve been staring at variations of this word for years. Different walls, different markers, same handwriting. My handwriting, technically, though I have never quite been able to claim it.
My pulse is racing, but not in panic, not anymore. Panic would require surprise, and this stopped being surprising somewhere around the fifteenth time. I do a quick inventory—hoodie, jeans, boots. Fully dressed. Thank fuck.
One time, I woke up here in nothing but my boxers. Once in only socks. Another, I was barefoot in February. But the worst might have been when I found blood drying on my leg and had no memory of how it got there. So yeah, fully clothed and holding a marker instead of something sharp? I’ll take it.
Small victories.
When I was a kid, it started as harmless sleepwalking, wandering into the kitchen in the middle of the night, standing in doorframes, and freaking people out. But somewhere along the line, probably sometime in my teens, it stopped being funny and started being dangerous.
I jumped through my window once, straight through the glass. It got me thirty-three stitches down my leg, and the glass missed my femoral artery by a couple of centimeters. With the tiniest shift, I could’ve died, bleeding out on the ground outside my bedroom.
Sometimes I still wonder how long it would’ve taken for anyone to notice I was gone.
Long enough.
Of course, nobody ever formally diagnosed me, but Google filled in the blanks well enough to scare the shit out of me.
Apparently, I have a REM behavior disorder.
My body doesn’t get the memo that dreams are supposed to stay internal.
So, when I go to bed at night, I try to be as exhausted as humanly possible, which is the easy part.
I zip myself into a sleeping bag up to my neck, then slide on mittens so I can’t unzip myself, pick up knives, keys, or, apparently, paint markers. Most nights, it works.
Naps, though…. unplanned naps are where I get fucked.
I had a little time between the logging and the dinner shift earlier, and I remember sitting at my desk, sketching a new graffiti piece, while my eyes started drooping.
And now I’m here.
STUPID
The word on the wall continues to stare at me, but it’s always something like that. Dumb. Idiot. Useless. Nothing creative, just my subconscious grabbing a marker and saying exactly what it thinks of me. The fucked-up part is that it’s always spelled correctly. Every single time.
When I’m awake and want to read or write, the letters flip and slip, always impossible for me.
But whenever I wake up from sleepwalking and find insults written in my own hand, the spelling is perfect, as though whatever part of my brain takes over at night doesn’t have the same problems as when I’m awake.
I thought about that too. What it means is that the only thing my subconscious can apparently spell are the words I don’t let myself say out loud. Not in front of Jasper or Mabel. Anyone really.
Out here, in an empty building at whatever-the-fuck in the afternoon, there’s nobody to perform for.
So here it is. The honest version. The one that lives under the grin and the practiced ease of a person who learned very early that being useful was the best way of staying tolerated.
“Okay,” I murmur to the empty building. “Let’s clean up this mess.”
I find the old crate of spray cans where it’s been for years, tucked behind a collapsed workbench. I grab one, shake it, and listen to the rattle.
Still a little paint in there.
The hiss of the spray is loud in the hollow space as white paint bleeds over the red letters, swallowing them whole. The word disappears inch by inch until there’s nothing left but a lighter patch of wall. At least out here, I can fix it.
I toss the can back into the crate and then lean against a dry patch of wall, tilting my head back and resting against it. The cold sinks into my skin while the exhaustion settles back into my bones.
I’m so fucking tired.
The little restless sleep I get, sleeping pills, and routines don’t help.
Pretending I’m fine helps the least.
Sucking in a deep breath, I step away from the wall and roll my neck slowly from left to right until something in it loosens.
This place is beautiful in a broken way—color everywhere, every high wall windowless but layered in art, a lot of it mine.
Four trees have taken up residence inside the building, their trunks stretching upward, reaching for the light spilling in from a ceiling that doesn’t exist anymore.
The sky is already paling as late afternoon bleeds toward evening as I walk toward town.
I rub the fabric of my hoodie sleeves between my fingers, an old habit, something to do with my hands when my head gets too loud.
The red from the marker is smeared into the creases of my knuckles, and there’s white dust under my nails from the spray can, which makes me think of Lemon’s yellow fingernails, and about whether she’ll come in today, or rather, whether she can come in today.
My chest does that stupid, tight thing it’s been doing since yesterday.
I hated yesterday.
Not only because she got hurt, or because I spent half the evening imagining worst-case scenarios because nobody told me how bad it was, but because Renée and Paul Bennett showed up to step in for her.
They were polite to me, professional, and I should’ve been grateful.
Instead, I spent the whole shift trying not to think about how natural they looked running the place.
They’re Mabel’s real family. The ones whose name is already on the building, and the ones who’d inherit if anything happened to her before I could scrape together enough to buy it from her.
I shove the thought down hard. Not going there. Not today.
The number in my savings account has exactly the same digits it had six months ago, which is because the boiler in the east wing needed replacing after I fucked up fixing it, and I paid out of my own pocket because telling Mabel felt like handling her the evidence that I can’t manage the place without her.
I can manage the place. I just need time.
And maybe another season without something structural deciding to fail me.
The goal is still the goal. I just need more time.
The inn is mine in every way that matters except on paper, and I’m going to keep it that way. I have to. It’s the only thing I’ve ever been good at, the only place where my hands know what to do, even when my brain can’t keep up. If I lose it, I lose everything. Jasper. Mom. Our home.
So yeah. Not going to think about the Bennetts taking over.
I pick up my pace and focus on getting back, checking if Lemon showed up, doing my job, and proving, once again, that I belong there.
One shift at a time.
When I finally reach the inn, I find Simon behind the reception desk, looking as if he’s about to have a panic attack. A middle-aged man is leaning over the counter, his voice edged with irritation.
“I waited forty-five minutes for someone to bring up extra towels. Forty-five minutes! What kind of operation are you running here?”
“I’m so sorry, sir, I put in the request. I thought housekeeping would…” Simon is fumbling with a notepad, his face red. “Let me just call them again.”
I slip behind the desk and step in smoothly, giving Simon a quick nod that says I’ve got this.
“Mr. Patterson, I apologize.” I’m already pulling fresh towels from the storage closet behind the desk. “This is completely on us. I’ll bring these up to your room personally right now, and your dinner tonight is on the house.”
His expression shifts from angry to surprised. “Oh. Well, that’s not necessary—”
“I insist. Besides…” I add, holding up my paint-stained hands with a rueful grin, “… you’ve already had to wait for someone who looks like he just finger-painted his way through art class.
The least I can do is feed you well. Our new chef is incredible.
If you don’t come back for dinner tonight, you’ll regret it way more than I will. ”
He laughs, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. “All right, you’ve convinced me.”
Now, I hope even more that Lemon is working later.
“Room 12, correct? I’ll have these up in two minutes.”
“Thank you. I appreciate it.”
As soon as he leaves, I turn to Simon and keep my voice low. “Storage closet first, then housekeeping, it’s faster during high season. You’ll get the hang of it. First week is always rough.”
Simon nods, looking relieved. “Thanks, man. I don’t know how you stay so calm.”
I shrug. “Years of practice and a low bar for what counts as a crisis.”
I learned this early on. If you panic, everyone panics. If you stay steady, things stay manageable.
The trick is that it costs something every time, and nobody ever sees you pay it.
I went to school with Simon. So when he showed up yesterday, saying he’d lost his job at the Vaughn mansion and needed work, I took pity on him and asked Mabel to hire him, because I absolutely could use the help at reception.
I run the towels up to Room 12, check the reservation system quickly—nothing else pressing—help Simon respond to a couple of emails, then head into the restaurant.
I find Sydney already there, setting tables for dinner service, which should start in about half an hour, so it’s a good thing I woke up when I did.