“Don’t leave.”
“I won’t.”
“Please.”
“I’m staying.”
He buried his face against my chest.
Every ragged breath moved through me. Every tremor. Every desperate attempt his body made to escape a danger that had ended weeks ago.
Marlowe climbed back onto the bed and pressed his body against Noah’s legs, whining.
Noah reached blindly until his hand found the dog’s fur.
I kept speaking.
Not promises of recovery.
Not assurances I could not make.
Only facts.
The mattress beneath us.
The harbor outside.
The green lamp shining in the hall.
My arm around him.
His heart beating against my ribs.
Mine answering.
“You’re home,” I whispered.
Noah shook his head against my chest, crying without restraint.
“I don’t know where that is.”
“Then stay with me until you do.”
His grip tightened.
I held him through the dark.
Chapter 12
REID
Noah trembled in my arms until the nightmare began, inch by inch, to release him.
At first, nothing I said seemed able to reach him.
Every breath snagged halfway into his lungs and broke apart. His right fist knotted in my shirt, twisting the cotton against my chest, while he hid his face beneath my chin as if seeing the bedroom might drag him back beneath the wreckage. Marlowe pressed against his legs, whining each time another violent shudder moved through him.
I kept one hand curved around the back of Noah’s neck.
