Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
Paul
The armchair has done something irreversible to my back.
I register this before anything else—the complaint of a spine that spent the night at an angle no ergonomic professional would endorse. I notice it the way I do everything, then I remember what happened in my dream, and I stop.
Ridge.
The way he said missing you with the flat delivery of a man dropping a live grenade and stepping back.
I sit up straight and groan at the pain that sings through me at the movement.
Five years of distance, and Ridge came into my dreamscape, dismantling it in forty minutes of mutual attempted assault.
I shift my attention to the bed, at Lennon and Tessa, both of them exactly where they’ve been when I fell asleep, under the blazing ceiling light. Tessa’s chest is rising and falling steadily. Lennon, with her face still turned toward her.
The picture of them is still hard to process, but it is somewhat less hard than it was yesterday, because Ridge is in it with me now.
Furious and present, infuriating and in it.
Which makes me think about groceries. Because if Ridge is coming to stay at my house, the protein powder, the potatoes, and the espresso won’t suffice.
Ridge eats badly when left to his own devices.
I know that’s rich coming from me, but I will absolutely not let him look at whatever I have available and decide to subsist exclusively on sour candy.
I know this because I spent years watching him do it.
I mentally make a list for a comprehensive plan for what needs to happen before the medical team brings Lennon home, including a shower first because that is not negotiable, the spare room aired out and ready, the ground floor reconfigured so her care can happen without navigating stairs, and a call to the stairlift company to restart the installation I stopped five years ago.
I stand and move to the bed, looking at Lennon’s face, at the beauty marks I’ve cataloged, and the way, even in complete stillness, she looks like someone who is about to say something.
“I’m bringing you home today.” I press my lips to her cheek. “And back to yourself. Soon.”
She doesn’t stir as I reach for my jacket and step out into the hallway, but then in the hallway mirror, I catch myself and stop.
The reflection is not flattering.
Days in the same clothes left me looking wrinkly.
The gray in my beard has graduated to something that would charitably be called distinguished and less charitably be called a man who has lost track of the concept of grooming.
I lean in slightly and then lean back out because the closer I get, the worse it is.
I smell, and this is not the first time I’ve noticed this, but it is the first time I have sufficient bandwidth to do something about it.
Making my way down the stairs, I find Nora in the kitchen with her hands around a mug of something, still in her robe.
She looks up when she hears me. “Are you leaving?”
“Yes. I’m going to make everything ready if the offer from yesterday still stands.”
“Of course, it does.” She sets the mug down. “The medical team will be here in a few hours. They’ll make sure she’s stable for the transfer.”
“Thank you.” I put on my jacket, adding, “I’m sorry, I know this is a lot to ask, and I’m more than happy to pay.”
“Hush. I know you can’t do your best work without your material at home, and you won’t go anywhere while she’s here.
” She picks up her mug again, and her gaze moves past me toward the hallway.
“I made a mistake once, not understanding what love can do to a person. What it makes them capable of. What it costs when you stand in its way. I won’t make it again. ”
I don’t say anything because there’s nothing to say that wouldn’t diminish it, so I nod once. She gives me the smallest of smiles in return, and I leave.
The cold hits my face when I step outside, and I take a full breath of it, the first one in five days that doesn’t smell like the combination of antiseptic, sugar, and lemons.
Pulling up my jacket, keys in hand, I turn toward the Mercedes, then stop. Nevan Shaw is standing at the front wall of the Vaughn mansion.
He’s facing the wall with a spray can raised in one hand, arm extended, completely still, and he’s wearing only a pair of gray boxers and one sock, suggesting whatever journey brought him here did not include either a plan or adequate footwear.
“Nevan.” I cross the path toward him, then reach out and close my hand around his wrist, turning him to me. “What are you—”
The spray can hisses, and paint hits the left side of my face in a cold burst.
Shit.
Taking a step back on pure reflex, my hand comes up too late. All I can do is stand there with paint dripping from my jaw.
What in the world?
I take off my glasses and look at them. The left lens is entirely red. I wipe my sleeve across my mouth, redistributing the paint more than it removes, look at the smear on my cuff, then back at the glasses.
I don’t know how, but this has to be Ridge’s fault.
Nevan is looking at nothing. Not at me, not at the wall. His expression is completely absent, not vacant the way someone looks when they’ve checked out of a conversation, but the way of a person whose consciousness is somewhere other than their body.
He’s asleep.
Holy shit.
I put my glasses back on and take him in properly. His breathing is slow and even. His eyes are open but not tracking. He’s standing upright in one sock in the cold, and he has absolutely no idea I’m here.
He’s sleepwalking.
And you should never wake a sleepwalker unless they’re in immediate danger. The shock of sudden waking can cause confusion, panic, and acute disorientation, none of which would be useful to either of us right now, with him in his underwear and me with paint drying on my face.
Spraying someone else’s property is, technically, not an immediate danger, right?
I check the wall behind him. He’d only managed the top half of a letter before I interrupted. Hard to say what it was going to be.
The street is empty, and the mansion windows are dark, except for the kitchen.
I have approximately four minutes before Nora Vaughn takes her morning tea to the front window and discovers a half-naked young man with a spray can standing at her wall, at which point she will absolutely call the police.
“Let’s get you home,” I whisper when I step beside Nevan, reach up, put one hand gently on his shoulder, and begin guiding him toward my car.
He comes easily, his body following the redirect without his brain needing to participate.
I walk him slowly around the back, open the passenger door, and maneuver him inside.
After closing his door softly, I quietly walk around the car and get into the driver’s seat.
It’s not until my door shuts that Nevan blinks, and I watch his consciousness return behind his eyes, assembling the situation.
“Good morning, Nevan. You’re safe.”
“Where… where am I?”
“You’re in my car because I was about to drive you home. Are you cold?”
Nevan frowns, then looks down at the spray can in his hand. His gaze rises to the mansion, then lands on my face.
“Fuck.”
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Fuck!”
“Nevan.”
“This is a new low, even for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I…” He stops and runs a hand over his face. “Nothing. I don’t know.” He looks at the wall again through the windshield, then back at me. “I’m sorry about your…” He gestures to my face. “I guess that was me.”
“It’s fine.”
“It’s really not.”
“It’ll come off.”
Probably.
Hopefully.
“I should go.” He starts to open the door.
“Where?”
“Home. I need to…” he looks down at himself, “… get some clothes.”
“I’ll drive you.”
“It’s fine, I can—”
“Nevan!” I shoot him a hard look. “You are not walking home in your underwear.”
He nods and deflates instantly, as if leaving were only a polite suggestion, and he’s glad he doesn’t have to. He sits back and pulls the door shut again.
I reach into the middle console for the glass cleaning set I keep there. The paint comes off the lenses well enough, though the frame will need more attention than I can give it in a car.
Nevan quietly sits there, his breathing slow and heavy.
“Does that happen often?” I ask.
“Since I was a kid, worse since my teens. But I usually wake up at the abandoned mill on the edge of town, not at…” he gestures vaguely back toward the Vaughn mansion, “… other people’s houses. Shit.” His eyes go wide. “I just committed a fucking felony.”
“You got more paint on me than on the house. I’m sure I can talk to Mrs. Vaughn about it.”
He looks at the side of my head. “Spraying people in the face is probably a felony too.”
The corner of my mouth twitches. “Not if I don’t tell anyone.”
He doesn’t say anything to that and looks back at the road, so I start the engine and pull away from the curb.
We drive for a moment in the quiet of two people who don’t know each other well enough to fill the silence easily and are both tired enough not to try.
But I watch him in my peripheral, the spray can still in his lap, one hand resting over it, looking out the window at a town that is so small, people know everything about each other.
I wonder how I haven’t known about his REM behavior disorder.
“Do you know what kind of psychologist I am?” I ask, breaking the silence.
“Not really. Mabel said something about sleep.”
“Why did she never send you to see me?”
He turns his head. “What?”
“For your condition.”
“My condition?” His eyes go wide.
He’s probably still half asleep.
“The sleepwalking?” I prompt.
“Oh.” He looks back at the window. “I don’t think she knows.”
“What? You said you have been doing that since you were a kid. How could she not know?”
He shrugs with one shoulder.
“Nevan, I—”
“I have ways of keeping it contained,” he cuts me off, then mumbles, “Most of the time.”
“Which would be?”
“Sleeping bag. Mittens. Tie my wrist to the bedframe when it’s bad.” He says it as if they’re simply the list of things you do to manage the situation because it’s yours to manage.