Chapter 11 #2
We get ready for bed, and when I climb in, I’m afraid one of us might do something stupid. But I push the fear away. He leans back against the headboard, legs long, expression carefully neutral, letting me choose the distance. I settle next to him.
“I need more from you,” I say. “Not more control. More . . . you. Tell me when you’re one inch from calling the plane. Tell me when you want to be a hero so bad your teeth hurt. Don’t make me guess. I’m bad at guessing when I’m trying not to use.”
He exhales, and the breath trembles down his arm, like he’s trying to let something escape without naming it.
“I can do that. And I need more from you. Not songs. Not jokes. Tell me when the bottle is whispering to you. Tell me when you want to run into a fire because it’s easier than sitting with the mess after. ”
“I said I’m bad at that,” I answer.
“I heard. I’m asking anyway.”
“Fine,” I murmur. “But we need rules. For us, not just for her.”
“Lay them on me.”
I lift three fingers without moving my head.
“One: we don’t turn Cleo’s care into a contest. No points for who stayed longest or who said the right thing first. Two: if one of us hits a nine, the other tags in—no heroics.
Three: we book couples therapy and don’t cancel because some meeting or magazine thinks it owns you. ”
He exhales a laugh that’s almost a sound of surrender. “You want more than one.”
“I do. But I want you to remember them.”
“Add one,” he says. “For me.”
“Four: we pick a word. If either of us says it, we stop what we’re doing and reset.”
He grins, the boy and the man folding into one expression. “Like a safe word?”
“Call it an emotional safe word if that helps.” I work hard not to roll my eyes.
He smiles smaller. “So not pineapple.”
“Never pineapple.” I slap a hand to my forehead. “Not a fruit, Edgar.”
“What then?”
I think about what we failed at and what we’re trying to learn. “Static,” I say. “If the noise takes over, we say static.”
“Static,” he repeats, testing it on his tongue. “What about five rules?”
“You’re pushing your luck.”
“Humor me.”
“Five: we touch when we ask and when we get a yes. Not because we’re starving. Because we’re choosing.”
His fingers pause on my hair. “Yes.”
We don’t say I love you. We don’t need to use it tonight.
He shifts and I move with him, a small recalibration that has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with trying to sleep without flinching. “Tell me about the songs you played to bring her back,” he says, like he wants proof of the hours I kept.
“The door one,” I say. “The lullaby. The one I wrote for Arlo . . . plus a bunch of new things to distract her.” He groans, and I grin into his thigh.
“What about while you were with her in the main bedroom?”
“She asked for no music at first, then changed her mind. I played a few of her favorite songs, and then some I’m working on . . . We ate. Twice. She called me out when I started to narrate the world for her. ‘I can do it on my own,’ she said. So, I shut up.”
“Good,” he murmurs. “Teach me how to shut up.”
“You’re learning,” I say, and he is. He didn’t call the pilot. He didn’t sprint into the trees. He didn’t turn our day into a rescue he could brag about later. He stayed put and asked me to stay.
Silence grows—a quiet, not the kind that eats you. His hand finds the back of my neck and just rests there. I close my eyes and count to eight, then sixteen, not because I’m about to jump off a cliff inside my head but because measuring something that isn’t pain feels good.
“I keep seeing him,” he says after a while. “Dorian. In that lobby. The thought of him touching her with that voice, that smile—” He stops before the words become something that bites.
“You shouldn’t have watched the videos.” I fucking warned him.
When Arthur Bradley offered to help him rescue Cleo, they brought on board his son, who hacked into Dorian’s system. They had access to all his cameras and saw what was happening to Cleo. Hence, they sped up the rescue as much as they could. Also . . . they showed some of the video to Eddie.
I don’t think he’s ever going to survive that.
“I know.” He bobs his head.
“Static,” he says, just to try the word out loud. It sits between us and doesn’t demand anything.
“You can sleep,” I tell him. “I’ll take first watch.” I don’t mean guard duty. I mean, if the memories and bad dreams show up for him, I’ll tell them to fuck off.
He snorts softly. “We’re not trading watches over each other like a campout.”
“We’re allowed to be ridiculous,” I say. “It beats being tragic.”
He taps two fingers against my shoulder in a rhythm I recognize from when we were stupid and new. “Trade me at two,” he says.
“Deal.”
Minutes pass. The house settles into night-sounds. Somewhere downstairs, there’s a click.
“I’m glad you kissed me,” Eddie says, a whisper that might be for me or for the ceiling. “It felt like we were on the same team.”
“We are,” I say. “We keep forgetting, but we are.”
He presses his mouth to my forehead. It’s a touch without hunger, a benediction he doesn’t believe he’s allowed to give. I let it land. I don’t chase it. We’re learning.
“Tomorrow,” he says, and leaves the rest for the morning to decide.
“Tomorrow,” I agree.
The door stays open. In the other room, a girl sleeps like sleeping is a new instrument, and she’s close to hearing how it’s tuned. In this room, two men who broke each other a little are trying to be easier on the wood this time.
“Static,” I murmur, just to feel the word on my tongue.
“Static,” he echoes, and it doesn’t mean noise for once. It means stop, breathe, begin again.