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7
When I wakeup later that morning, the world feels strange and almost painfully bright.
I’m not disoriented. I know exactly where I am, and I remember everything that happened yesterday. But something is off. Wrong. Uncomfortable.
After I pry my eyes open, I realize what must have woken me up. Grant has just walked into the tiny room we’re sharing. He’s fully dressed in the clothes he wore yesterday, and he smells like dirt and grass and sun.
Sun.
That’s why the world feels so weird right now. It’s late in the morning, and I normally get up at dawn.
“What time is it?” I ask in a croaky voice. It’s like my voice has forgotten how to work.
“Eight thirty or nine, I’d guess.”
Not since vacation days in high school have I slept in so late. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because it’s late! How long have you been up?”
He gives a brief shrug. “Few hours. You feel okay?”
“No.” I’m scowling as I sit up on the side of the bed, trying to pull my scattered thoughts together. “I overslept, and I never do that. You should have woken me up when you got up.”
“Like hell, I should.” He’s frowning back at me as he sits on the bed beside me. “You needed the sleep, and you didn’t miss anything important. I was just helping out with some chores.”
“I could have helped too.” I’m making too big a deal about this. I know I am. But I’m feeling so off-kilter I can’t seem to stop myself. “I didn’t need to lie around in bed all morning like a lazy teenager.”
He gives me a mild eye roll, but his voice is a little softer as he says, “You had a hard day yesterday and a long night. You needed the sleep.”
“You needed it too.”
“I don’t sleep much. Not anymore.”
Maybe it’s the way he says the words. Matter-of-fact. Like an unquestionable statement of his reality. Or maybe it’s the culmination of everything I’ve learned about him in the past five years. But I suddenly realize something—in one of those flashes of insight that sometimes hit without warning.
Everything I assumed was cold or unfeeling in him isn’t that at all. It’s him desperately tightening his grip around a world that’s always spinning out of control. He’s always fighting to hold it together—so much that he won’t even let himself sleep.
The revelation hurts my chest. I can barely breathe for a few seconds around the weight where my heart should be.
Finally I say the only thing I’m capable of getting out. “You need sleep as much as I do.”
He must hear something in the hoarse whisper of my words. He takes a quick, thick breath.
I reach over to pick up his hand, which he’s holding in a loose fist on the bed between us. I gently unclench each finger and massage the palm with my thumbs.
Neither one of us speaks for a few minutes. The only sound in the room is his slightly ragged breathing. I want to say something that expresses how I’m feeling right now. To let him know he can trust me. That he can let go with me. He doesn’t always have to exist in this hard, endless suppression.
But I don’t know how to say all that, and he might not want to hear it from me.
So I don’t say anything. I just rub his hand.
Finally he shifts slightly on the bed and pulls his arm away.
It hurts as much as anything, but the moment—whatever it was—is clearly over. “So what’s the plan today?” I ask, pleased and surprised that I sound almost natural.
“Yeah, Jackson and I were talking about that. We think it’s worth waiting a few days to see if the Wolf Packs move out on their own. Most of our supplies are in the bunker, which they can’t get to, so they’ll go through the stuff on the surface pretty quick. Maybe they’ll move on afterward.”
