46. Paige
PAIGE
Something wakes me up.
But it’s still dark, and my head feels thick. The comforter smells familiar. I close my eyes again. It was probably nothing. Sleep beckons, and I’m eager to follow.
A sound cuts through the air. I turn over in bed, toward the warm arm brushing near mine. It sounded like a groan.
Rafe. I’m sharing his bed.
We ended up here again, after working late into the night. I fell asleep almost the second my head hit the pillow. He was lying beside me, reading one of his worn paperbacks.
There’s another sound. Half muffled by the pillow and far too loud. I blink my eyes open.
It’s coming from him. The groan shifts into a yell so loud that I burst up into sitting.
“Rafe?” I ask. There’s movement beside me, and the arm is pulled back. The covers are bunched and it’s too dark, I can barely make him out. “Rafe?”
I prod his shoulder. He doesn’t move, and his skin is hot to the touch.
I’ve never seen anyone have a nightmare like this.
He turns his head on the pillow, and another hoarse groan escapes him. It turns into a yell so loud I push against him. “Rafe, wake up. It’s just a bad dream. Rafe…”
I scramble to find the light switch. With the beside lamp on, I can see him shifting in bed. His hair looks damp and the t-shirt he’s wearing is bunched up. I can see the edge of that scar again.
He groans again. It’s an agonized sound, like someone is hurting him. Is it good to wake someone up when they’re having a nightmare? It has to be. I have to do something. So I grip both of his shoulders and shake him.
He groans again. Beneath his eyelids, his eyes roam.
I smooth a hand over his cheek. It’s hot and rough with stubble. “Rafe, you’re dreaming. Rafe. Wake up.”
He grows still.
His eyes open and look directly into mine with a narrowed, deadly intensity that makes me think this was a bad idea.
All I hear is both of our heavy breathing.
“Paige,” he finally says. His voice is hoarse, and there’s still that tense rigidity to him. Like he could shatter with a single blow.
My thumb brushes over the warm skin of his neck. His skin is scorching and his pulse quick beneath it. “You were having a nightmare,” I whisper.
“It’s fine,” he says. The thick, dark hair looks damp against his forehead, and his chest is rising fast. “There’s no need to wake me up because of it.”
Should I have listened to his pain, his obvious distress, and left him trapped in it? I sit back on my heels and let my hand fall from him. “It’s just… you made sounds.”
As soon as I’m no longer above him, he turns to the edge of the bed and sits up. Like he wants to get away. His back is rigid when he runs a hand over his face.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” he mutters.
“Are you… okay?” I ask.
He’s taking deep, quiet breaths. Like he’s pulling himself together and locking it all down tight.
I lie back down on my side and curl up under the thin comforter. Maybe it has to do with however he got that scar. The childhood accident and how they lost his brother.
A piece of him that he won’t let me see.
“Yeah,” he finally mutters.
“Does that happen often?”
“Not lately,” he says.
No. It can’t, I realize. I’ve slept in the same bed as him for over a week, and I haven’t noticed anything.
He looks back at me, a neutral expression on his face. It looks like a mask. Like he’s hiding any number of emotions behind it. The only remnant of what just happened is his flushed skin and the tight clench of his jaw.
I wonder if this is connected to why he fights sometimes, driving at night to places he has no business being.
He turns back to face the dark windows.
I sit up and wrap my arms around my knees. “It sounded like you were in pain,” I say.
It’s not the question I want to ask. What did you dream about? He seems like someone who’s never scared. Has everything under control.
Rafe pushes off the bed and walks across the room. He rolls his shoulders, like there’s coiled energy in him from whatever he dreamed of. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But it might—”
“Remember how we don’t talk too much about your panic attacks? This is one of those things.”
“All right,” I say. “Do you want to talk about something else?”
He turns to look at me, and there’s a scathing look on his face. Somehow I know it’s not really meant for me. He hates that I’ve seen this.
Finally a way we can relate.
“Like what?” he asks.
“Anything. Something to take your mind off it. Tell me what you would do now if you were alone.”
He stands still in the middle of his bedroom. He seems just as likely to leave with a slammed door as he does stepping into the shower. Actually replying to me seems like a quickly dwindling possibility.
I stare at him.
He stares at me.
But then he sighs and turns back toward the dark windows. “I don’t have a protocol. Yes, yes. Make your joke about that. Me, playing things by ear.”
“I have seen you now, you know. Being more relaxed.”
“Sometimes I go swim laps. When I’m in Paris, I go for a walk.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“Yes,” he says.
“That seems unsafe.” My voice comes out soft in the room. Maybe it’s the darkness or what I’ve just witnessed, but I feel an aching inside. Like the threat of loneliness that I can usually keep at bay threatens to swallow me whole.
He looks over at me. “I can handle myself.”
“Oh. Yeah. I’ve seen that.”
“So you have.”
I rest my head in my hands. “Tell me about your place in Paris, then.”
“You’ll see it. Soon enough.” He turns back toward the windows. “It’s an old apartment in Auteuil. It’s big, prewar, with enfilade rooms. Good location. It’s actually walking distance to Stade Roland-Garros.”
“Really?” I ask. The French Open is world famous. I’d love to see games there one day. It’s been a life-long dream.
“Yes. I’ll show it to you,” he says.
“Do you miss Paris? When you’re not there?”
“No.” He pushes the curtains back and opens the window fully. The fabric flutters in the sudden burst of air, and he takes a deep breath.
“What place feels like home to you?”
He looks out the window. “None of them,” he says. “I don’t know, Wilde. What conversation topic is this?”
“It’s something I’ve been curious about.”
“Don’t be curious about me,” he says.
“Then stop being so intriguing.”
He laughs. It’s a low sound, and a little hoarse. He braces his hands on the wrought iron of the French balcony. “The irony of that, coming from you.”
It’s half a compliment, spoken like an insult. And it warms me despite the breeze he’s letting into the room.
“Maybe we’re both more complicated than we gave each other credit for. You know, back at the courthouse.”
He doesn’t answer for a long time. He just stands there, letting the cool wind wash over him, eyes locked on the dark lake beyond. I slip back beneath the covers and turn onto my side to watch him.
“I knew that the same day,” he finally says. His voice sounds reluctant. Like he doesn’t really want to be having this conversation and is thinking about swimming laps instead, but finds himself being drawn in.
I can relate to that feeling.
“Do you think you’ll be able to fall asleep again?” I ask.
“Maybe,” he says.
“You can read your book again. What is it about?”
“It’s a thriller.”
“Oh, maybe not then, if it’s scary.”
“It’s not. It’s a financial—never mind.” He turns to me, his back to the open window. “You should go back to sleep, Paige.”
I curl up on my side. His sheets are freshly changed, and they smell good. “You called me by my name. You don’t do that often.”
He watches me from across his room, faintly illuminated by the streaks of light visible outside. Moonlight, starlight, I don’t know.
“Sleep,” he repeats.
“While you watch?” I ask.
He scoffs. It’s barely a laugh, but it’s something, and for some reason it makes me smile against the cotton of the comforter. It’s better than the agony I heard earlier and the scar on his chest I can’t forget seeing.
He pulls the windows nearly closed, fixing them with the hitch. Then he walks back over to his side of the bed and grabs the book I asked him about. He turns on his bedside light.
The bed dips when he sits down against the headboard beside me and opens the book.
“Not watching you,” he murmurs. “Happy?”
“Yes,” I say, and think of his arms around me, telling me to breathe. I can’t do the same back. But maybe, in some small way, I helped even out the score tonight.
He turns a page in the paperback he’s holding. Sitting so close, awake… I’m sure there’s no way I can fall back asleep.
But I’m wrong on that count.
It doesn’t take long at all for my eyes to drift closed, and I hear the faint rustling of pages as he reads, and his steady breathing, so different from what woke me up minutes ago.