Page 119 of Bonetide

But the more pressing thing right now is that I really need to pee. Some things in life can’t be helped, no matter the circumstances.

I shift. Just a little, to let him know I’m moving.

“You’re awake,” he mumbles, low at my ear.

His voice in the morning is the voice he uses with me in the dark, that low, careful Scots thing, the rich brogue the cadence, the sound of it travels down the back of my neck and into my chest where it makes my heart bloom against my will.

“Were you awake the whole night?” I inquire.

“Aye, foxglove.”

“You should sleep.”

“I don’t, really.”

Of course he doesn’t, really. Part of me wants to ask him if maybe he ever tried sleeping like a dolphin, with one half of the brain working, and the other turned off, but I don’t because I need to pee.

“I have to get up.”

He lifts the weight of his arm off my waist, and I sit up, the quilt sliding off my bare shoulders into my lap. The cold of the cottage hits my skin all at once and I whimper profusely which is the most normal thing about this morning so far.

I look at him.

His hair is dry. Properly dry for the first time in a while, the black silky weight of it loose around his chin, the slight wave to it where it dried against the pillow. The early light from the window is on his face and his eyes are the bright pale blue they’re supposed to be.

He looks like a man. A ridiculously handsome man who happens to be naked in my bed, but just a man.

But he isn’t just a man, I remind myself. Still, how can I believe that when my eyes are telling me otherwise?

I drag my eyes off him before I do something embarrassing. Like climb back into bed.

“I’m gonna pee,” I say, with all the grace of someone trying to get the conversation back on track and the conversation is revolving around bodily fluids.

“Aye, foxglove. You go do that.”

“And then I’m gonna have coffee, and then I’m gonna ask you some questions.”

“Aye.”

“A lot of questions.”

A tinge of sadness comes over his eyes. “I know.”

After I do my business, I come out of the bathroom in Effie’s robe cinched tight, with my hair in a knot, my face washed, teeth brushed, and the marks on my throat hidden under the collar. He’s in the kitchen at the back window, wearing dark trousers and a black shirt that he must have taken off when he came in last night, his back to me, the kettle going on the stove, the French press out on the counter, as well as a tin of tea for himself.

He turns when I come in and doesn’t say anything, just looks at me and once again I’m struck by how normal he looks—how normal and borderline domestic this all feels. How can he be what he is? In the light of day, how can such a thing exist? How can there be monsters?

There can’t be, I decide. At least not right at this moment, and not in my kitchen.

He makes me coffee the way I like, and pulls out the chair for me. I slouch down in it, and he sits across with his tea, dunking in the bag with his slender fingers. The first sip of the coffee is scalding hot, the second is bittersweet and good, and the third one makes me feel like a person again, enough that I’m straightening up in my chair like a pool toy that’s slowly being inflated.

“You’re not having any.” I observe.

“I have my tea. Coffee is an acquired taste, isn’t that what they say?”

I’m not sure who “they” are, but I nod anyway.

“Ask me the questions,” he says quietly.