Brock watches me not say it. Then he looks back at the street, which from him is mercy.
The door and the ex, I can do something about. The way my thoughts keep moving back to her, I can’t. So I deal with the problems that are mine to solve. Brock knows exactly what he handed me. Neither of us says it.
And none of it gets me up those stairs.
Because up those stairs I get seen. By her. Up close, and I can’t let her see. Not yet. I don’t need to be one more body in that room, one more set of eyes she can feel on her. That’s worse than useless.
All true. I could stand on this sidewalk until sunrise stacking reasons.
If I go up, I won’t leave.
Because every plan I made for the rest of my life has already gone up in smoke.
So I don’t go up.
I don’t have to go up to protect her with everything I am.
I’ll put eyes on her she never feels. I’ll stay in control. And I never have to find out what my face does, because she’ll never get to see it.
It’s the cleanest plan I’ve made all night.
Also the kind of plan a man only makes when he’s already lost. I know the difference. I’ve decided I don’t care.
Brock’s still on the steps when I move. He doesn’t ask where I’m going.
Good.
It’s better that way.
I leave the light, and the sightlines I spent an hour mapping.
And I go to work.
Chapter 20
Rayner
I didn’t mean to come here.
Fell asleep on somebody’s floor with the others spread out around me, and somewhere in there the pull took over and put me through a door I never opened.
Hers. Again.
Some walkers come up out of a dream swinging. Not me. I land soft, stay where I land, and read the place. Inside a breath I know whether I’ve got work to do.
Tonight I don’t. The dream’s calm. No teeth in it, no weather coming. Just her, asleep in the middle of it, and a lot of quiet.
Her plant is here, and it’s the size of a tree. Good for him.
I was in that apartment all night. Watched her hold it together through a busted door and four strangers and a number that wouldn’t add up. Watched her call it and march off to her room with her chin up like she’d won. Then she lay down, and the whole day came off her at once, and this is where it landed.
Awake she’s all motion — deflection, quick exits, a joke out the door before the fear can catch her. None of that made it in here. She’s just out. Resting like it’s been a while.
How long has it been? Since she’s put it all down and been exhausted enough that she finally gets to stop.
I’ve been finding my way into her dreams for years. I never told anyone, because what do you even say? For a long time I figured I had built her out of the old stories to keep me company, and I didn’t question it, because questioning it might make it stop.
Last night she was there, like always. Then I woke up, crossed to another realm on orders directly from the Vestry and there she was.
