At eleven, I returned upstairs.
His bedroom door remained open.
Noah slept on his right side, facing my empty pillow.
Chapter 11
REID
I woke before sunrise because the apartment had forgotten how to sound like home.
For years, Noah’s sleep had filled the dark with its own vocabulary. Sheets whispering as he rolled toward me. A bare foot searching beneath the blankets until it found my ankle. Irritated sighs whenever I stole back the pillow he had already stolen from me. Occasionally, a half-formed curse aimed at the rain, the mattress, or whatever enemy his dreams had invented.
From the spare room, I heard none of it.
I lay awake on the pullout couch beneath a blanket twisted around my legs and stared at the ceiling. A metal spring dug into my hip. The disused printer on the desk blinked its green power light at regular intervals, judgmental in its persistence.
Sleeping here had been my decision.
Noah needed control over his space. He needed the bedroom to belong to him without the silent pressure of my body in the other half of the bed. Every medical professional we had spoken to agreed that choice mattered.
A sensible decision could still feel like banishment.
A floorboard complained in the hall.
I sat up immediately.
A pale bar of light appeared beneath the bathroom door as Noah’s chair moved past the spare-room entrance. The motor gave its low electric hum, then stopped.
I waited for him to call.
He did not.
Water ran. A cabinet opened and shut. After several minutes, the chair carried him toward the kitchen.
I dressed quickly and followed.
Noah sat at the table in loose gray sweatpants and one of my old thermal shirts. The dark fabric hung from his thinner frame, and the sleeves covered half his right hand. His hair stood up at the back. He was squinting against the low light, the skin beneath his right eye colorless with fatigue.
“How bad is your head?”
He glanced up. “Good morning to you too.”
“That was not an answer.”
“Yes,” he admitted. “It hurts.”
I opened the medication organizer and removed the correct tablets.
Noah watched me line them up beside a glass of water.
“I can manage that.”
“Normally, yes.”
“I know how the box works.”
“You also appear to be negotiating with your own eyelid.”
