Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Paul
“Paul!”
My shoulder is shoved, jostling some of the sleep away.
“Paul, for fuck’s sake, wake up!”
Another shove, harder this time, and my eyes snap open. Groaning, I reach for my glasses before I’ve assembled a coherent thought.
The room slowly comes into focus. Lennon is asleep beside me. Perfect and right there.
For one blissful second, that’s the only thing that exists.
“Paul! The baby boy fucking sleepwalked.”
The urgency in Ridge’s voice has me bolting upright. “What?”
“Up the stairs,” Ridge says, wheeling toward the door in frantic, jerky movements. “I tried to stop him, but I couldn’t follow him, and now he’s…” He gestures toward the ceiling. “Who the fuck knows what he’s doing.”
I glance down at the floor at Nevan’s sleeping bag, which is now empty. The last scraps of sleep evaporate instantly as a loud crash echoes from upstairs.
“Paul, move, dammit!”
I’m already running out of the room.
“Tell me what you see,” Ridge calls after me, genuine panic in his voice.
I take the stairs two at a time, and I’m distantly aware of Ridge’s voice, yelling louder and louder for updates.
Second floor.
Third.
My pulse booms in my ears when I see an open door at the end of the hallway. I rush over but come to an abrupt halt when I find Nevan crouched on the windowsill.
My brain refuses to process what I’m seeing. What is about to happen.
The open window.
The drop below.
The early morning air moving his shirt.
Oh, Jesus-fucking-Christ.
I force myself to breathe and take a careful, silent step toward him, glad my socks muffle my movements.
Don’t startle him.
The voice in my head is professional and very calm, but my body is on high alert, cataloging Nevan’s every micromovement.
Three stories. The unforgiving concrete below. If he goes off that ledge at any angle other than straight back, he will hit the ground at a velocity that…
Fuck.
Don’t startle him.
I continue crossing the room, never taking my eyes off his back, watching for any shift in weight, any lean.
One more step. Almost there.
I get close enough to reach and am starting to believe I am going to get to him in time.
Nevan jumps.
I throw my body forward as a strangled “no” leaves me. My hand closes around his wrist, and his momentum pulls me into the windowsill after him.
My stomach slams into the frame hard enough that I’m instantly nauseous, but I catch myself against it with my free hand to bring us to a stop.
Then he’s hanging three stories above concrete with nothing between him and the ground except my grip.
Nevan hangs there, all dead weight, while every muscle in my body screams in protest.
“Nevan!” My voice doesn’t sound like mine anymore. “Nevan, wake up!”
Two hundred and thirty pounds of unconscious man suspended over empty space somehow gets even heavier, like an invisible force is pulling him from below.
My hand slips half an inch.
No.
No.
I tighten my grip on him, on the windowsill, until I can’t even feel it anymore.
“Nevan, wake up! Wake up right now!”
I can feel the strain running through my shoulder, back, and arm. I know exactly how much force is being placed on every joint involved, and how long I might be able to hold this until the adrenaline leaves me too weak.
The calculations aren’t encouraging.
My grip slips again, only a fraction, but enough to know that I’m losing.
If I let go of his hand, I will never be able to look into Lennon’s beautiful eyes again.
“Nevan!” His name tears out of me. “Wake the fuck up!”
His body jerks, and for a horrible moment, I think he’s going to slip out of my grip. But then his eyes snap open, and it only takes him a split second to realize he’s woken somewhere he shouldn’t be.
This phenomenon is not at all new for him, but it’s certainly the first time it has been seconds from killing him.
His entire body convulses in panic, and the sudden movement nearly rips his arm from my grasp.
“Paul,” he chokes out, eyes wild as he looks up at me, pleading with me to fix it.
“Grab the sill! Grab the fucking sill.”
Nevan looks down instead, and he jerks violently when he sees the drop below. “Paul!”
“Look at me.”
His eyes jerk back to mine, his face white as a sheet.
“Good,” I say around a heavy breath. “Good, keep looking at me. Reach up. The sill is right there.”
He tries to do as I say, but fumbles through empty air and misses, and my shoulder gives a violent throb.
Fuck.
“Again, Nevan. Try again.”
He does, and when his fingers scrape stone, the relief hits so hard it almost makes me dizzy.
“That’s it. That’s it, good man, I’ve got you.” He latches onto the frame, getting a better grip, and I finally allow myself a full breath. “Okay, on three, we’ll move together. One, two, three.”
He pulls, I pull, but he doesn’t budge.
For a terrifying moment, I imagine us trapped in place, him hanging over the void and me stretched across the window frame, holding onto him by stubbornness alone.
Sleep paralysis come to life.
But then Nevan’s jaw firms, and he pulls harder. His chest clears the ledge, then his stomach, his hips, and then we’re both falling backward onto the floor. At the very last second, I cradle his head with my hand to keep it from slamming into the hardwood.
Pain runs through my wrist as we collapse into a loud heap, and a breath of pain explodes from me.
Worth it.
Completely worth it if I don’t have to tell the love of my life that one of her boyfriends cracked his skull because of me.
Nevan lets out a sound of relief, somewhere between a laugh and a cry, and the realization hits me so hard I have to close my eyes.
Nevan is alive.
For a moment, I close my eyes and lie there, cataloging my injuries as the cold air pours through the open window while my pulse tries to punch its way out of my chest.
Holy shit.
I almost watched Nevan Shaw jump to his death. Here one moment, gone the next.
A hand grabs my sleeve. I open my eyes and find wide, gray eyes staring at me. Alive, breathing, but absolutely terrified.
I help him sit up, and we end up side by side against the wall beneath the open window. His hair blows in the breeze while somewhere below us, Ridge continues to yell.
I’m not sure he ever stopped.
I register that distantly, but what’s more important right now is that Nevan is shaking, and it’s not just fine tremors.
His whole body convulses. It’s the full adrenaline crash that happens when danger is over, and the brain finally realizes how close it came.
I recognize it because I’ve treated it, lived it.
I’m seconds away from it myself.
“You’re okay.” I slide a hand onto the back of his neck. “You’re safe. I’ve got you. It was a dream.”
Mostly true.
The fact that I’m also saying those things to myself remains between the universe and me.
Nevan drags in a ragged breath. “I almost died.”
“Yes, but you didn’t.”
His eyes squeeze shut. “I almost…” His voice breaks completely. “She was right.”
I frown.
She?
Then Nevan cracks, breaking out into deep chest-shaking sobs. The sound is pure agony, and one moment I’m beside him, the next I’m kneeling in front of him with both hands on his face. His eyes are bloodshot, and his breathing is a disaster.
“Nevan, you’re okay.”
He shakes his head, still sobbing.
I press my thumbs into his jaw. “Look at me.”
It takes a few seconds, but then his eyes finally find mine.
“S-she was right,” he repeats.
“Who was right?”
“My mom, she told me,” he says around broken breaths. “She told me I’d die young in my sleep.”
What the fuck?
Another sob tears through him. “She said that I was destined to die young and…”
My grip on his jaw tightens. “Listen to me, Nevan. I will not let that happen.”
His eyes widen at my tone.
“I have you now, okay?” I say, softening my words. “I will not let anything happen to you.”
His eyes search mine, as if he desperately wants to believe me, but he’s measuring it against what the world has taught him.
But then he chooses to accept my truth despite it.
Suddenly, I understand why Lennon loves him. Because beneath all his kindness, patience, and sunshine, there is a frightened kid who carried fear by himself for years because nobody taught him he didn’t have to.
“For a very long time, nobody had your back, and I am sorry for that.” My throat tightens, but I hold his gaze. “That is over now. It’s over.”
There’s a loud bang from downstairs, as if Ridge threw or hit something. “Paul!” Ridge yells. “Fucking dammit, someone tell me what’s happening. Is he…”
“He’s all right,” I call down. “Give us a minute!”
“Jesus, about time,” he yells back, barely any softer. “I’ll just wait here, then. Since someone apparently could not be bothered to install the stairlift I was promised.”
I nearly snort, but sober up when I turn back to Nevan, who’s still trembling and wide-eyed.
“See? We’ve got you now,” I say. “Both of us. Thanks to Lennon, Ridge and I are a package deal again.”
“Why?” he asks, then takes a shaky breath, his face crumpling. “Why would you… why would you do that?”
The answer feels obvious, which is strange.
A month ago, I barely knew him. A month ago, I hadn’t talked to Ridge in years, and my biggest concern was whether my nightmares were finally going to drive me mad.
Now, Ridge is yelling obscenities because he thought Nevan might be in danger.
I probably have a shoulder injury because I threw myself through a window after the Shaw boy, and the love of my life is asleep downstairs.
Lennon.
She’s why.
Because she somehow collected all of us like injured birds and deposited us in the same nest.
I keep thinking about soulmates, about fate, about Lennon, and the impossible certainty of looking at someone and knowing. But perhaps she wasn’t the only thing fate was trying to give me. Perhaps it was this.
The foul-mouthed, disagreeable writer downstairs.
The giant, weeping man in front of me.
The soft-hearted woman asleep in the room below, trying desperately to get back to us.
A family I never intended to have but would now quite happily fight the universe to keep.