Page 21 of Into Ember

“…But then you saved me from Kyle. At the coffee shop.”

“I did.”

She lies down. I pull the blanket over her, and she lets me, watching my face the whole time with eyes that are three-quarters closed and entirely too sharp.

“And then you weren’t there when he came back.”

My hands stop on the blanket.

“I know.” It comes out in a whisper. It’s all I have.

“But Muffin was.”

“Yeah.”

“And Muffin is Leif.”

“Apparently.”

“So Leif was there.”

“He was.”

She’s quiet long enough that I think she’s gone under.

“I’m glad he was,” she says.

She has no idea what she just gave him. She’d deny it in the morning. I’ll deliver it to Leif anyway — word for word, at some hour she can’t hear me do it. She’s been handing things out all night without knowing, and I’ve decided none of them are getting handed back.

“Stay with me?”

My heart does something I’ve only ever heard hers do.

“Elara…”

“Just until I fall asleep.” A yawn takes her whole face. “I don’t think it’ll take long.”

Three years of hallways. Three years of the right distance — twelve feet, a wall, a closed door, every night. And she asks like it’s a small thing, half-asleep, already sliding under. It is a small thing. To her. Tonight.

I take my boots off. I lie down on top of the blanket, careful, along the far edge of a bed with plenty of room in it.

She closes the distance without opening her eyes.

She rolls into me, and her head lands on my chest, and her hand comes up and takes a fistful of my shirt, and she settles with a low, content sound I have never once heard her make through that wall. I hold very still, because the woman is asleep on the surface and the thing underneath her is not, and I know exactly which one of them just moved.

Her breathing goes long and slow.

With nothing left to guard, my mind wanders two realms over to her refrigerator. The milk I bought her Saturday, standing in the dark of an empty apartment, going bad on a schedule nobody is left to care about. Her deadline. Her mother, who answers on the second ring, calling a phone that’s on a counter in another world. The list of things I am going to have to solve has gotten strange, and I add to it in the dark until her fingers twitch against my chest and pull my attention home.

Then, from the very edge of sleep, quiet and clear.

“You left me alone, Erik.”

In the clearing it was an accusation. This is worse. This is just true, said in the dark by someone too tired to aim it, and it covers all three years at once — every night I stood close enough to hear her and let her believe she was alone in the world.

“I’m so sorry.” My fingers are in her hair. I don’t remember deciding that. “It will never happen again.”

“Mm. You owe me.”