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Pulling her palm into mine, I rub gentle circles over the back of her hand with my thumb. Her breathing stutters and her eyes flash open as she recognizes she’s being touched.
“It’s just me,” I assure her, and she relaxes, her eyelids falling closed again and shoulders slumping. I watch her belly rise and fall as her breaths even out. She’s been working so hard to learn everything I put in front of her, from techniques to keep her cool to the proper posture for running.
She thinks of herself as something I’m obligated to care for, but I don’t see her that way. To me, Phoebe is exciting and I enjoy getting to do things for her and with her. I like that she whines until I give in and play movies for her, even though she doesn’t watch a fucking second of them once I turn them on. She’s working hard to make movie time a daily thing.
Putting Phoebe back to sleep has become part of my routine. I tried to come down before they started, but she would wake up in a weird state that scared the fuck out of me. She acted like a zombie and stared at me with these empty eyes and silently wept for what felt like hours.
So I wait for them to begin, listening for the little sounds she makes in her panic and then I come downstairs. I sit beside her and draw circles against her skin until it calms her. I start with a heavier pressure against her skin, but slowly lessen it. If I ease up on the touch and she frets, I know she’s not ready, so I restart.
It seems like every night she’s getting better at handling me leaving. Which should be a good thing. Itisa good thing that she’s healing. I still fucking hate it.
“I don’t want you to go,” I whisper to her, knowing she won’t actually hear me, but maybe her subconscious mind will process the words all the same. “I want you to stay here with me. It’s dangerous out there.”Fuck, I shouldn’t say that. I’ll scare her more if these words really do soak in, but… maybe she’ll stay.
The cyclical obsessive thoughts have to stop. Picture a stop sign- reflective letters inside a red hexagon. S T O P.Very simple word, simple concept- not so simple in practice. I attach myself to ideas and possibilities- I always have. I obsess over opportunities until I either manifest them or sabotage them for myself.
I just want to pull her into my lap and hold her close to me. Sometimes, when I’m laying in bed, my concerns grow until all I can think about is checking on her. I’ll creep out of bed and down the hallway until I can see her from the top of the stairs and make sure that at the very least she’s still breathing. I know that she’s safe here from everything on the outside, but I worry.
I thought my sister was okay. I knew that losing our parents and having to go into foster care was tough on her, but I thought she was dealing with it. She only had to put up with it for a few more years before she’d have been an adult. Outside the system, she could have come to live with me. She would have hated it here. She was such a social butterfly.
But I never suspected she’d fucking kill herself. So I’m more cautious with Phoebe. I pay attention and I check, like I wish I’d been around to do for my sister. I won’t lose another person. Everything comes back to keeping Phoebe safe. I tell myself I won’t force her to stay if she wants to leave, but then I imagine letting her walk out the gate away from me and it all stops there. It’s unimaginable.
Phoebe may someday want to assimilate back into the real world, and I don’t think I could let her. She’s here now. She’s mine. Everything that’s here is supposed to be permanent. She has to be too.
Fuckshitfuck. I spent too much time allowing myself to live in my imagination. My back is aching and my legs are asleep. My arm is over Phoebe’s legs, my hand resting in the small of her back, and my head is perched against her thighs. I’m curled up like a fucking pretzel, and she has one hand on each of my arms. If I move and wake her up, she’s going to freak out.
I have to get out of this before she wakes up, before she finds out that I decided to just rest my arm on the couch near her. Before she sees that I thought it would be okay to put my head on my arm as I stared at her beautiful features and considered every possible outcome of the decisions I might have to make in the future. Before she knows that my eyelids got heavy and I couldn’t stay awake and somehow I’ve ended up cuddling with her.
Fuckshitfuck.
Chapter Eighteen
Phoebe
Ihave the vaguest memory of Josiah being near me in my sleep, but I assume he must’ve just come to check on me sometime last night, because he was in the same place he always is when I woke up- sitting at his computer doing god only knows what. He doesn’t talk about it with me, and I don’t ask.
I probably wouldn’t understand it if he told me anyway. I’m not all that good with technology. With an intense setup like his, I know he’s doing shit on there I’ve never heard of. “I’m going to make some breakfast,” I announce before getting up to go to the kitchen.
“That sounds good,” Josiah says calmly, not taking his attention away from the computers at all. Since that night he kissed my forehead, he’s been looking at me differently, but he keeps his distance more. I wish I knew what’s going on inside that head of his.
I think he’s plotting something. He’s not very talkative, so I don’t get to hear much of his thoughts, but I can see it in his eyes sometimes. It’s like he’s planning something out, every detail. Maybe that’s part of the paranoia. He told me himself that he considers all the potentially negative aspects of something before he does anything.
“Did you sleep well?” Josiah asks while I’m pulling everything from the fridge and freezer that I need.
“Yeah, I slept great. How about you?” I refuse to complain about a single thing. He wants to buy me a damn bed, as if the couch isn't perfectly fine. Even if the couch’s springs were poking through and stabbing me at night, I couldn’t possibly let him do something else for me. As it is, the couch is actually really comfortable. I don’t have any problems with it.
“Fine.” Oh, he’s grumpy today.
I smile over the sizzling bacon. I love when he’s a grump. It makes it more fun to push his buttons and rile him up. I do feel bad that he got a rough night of sleep, but that’s not my fault so I’ll just use it to my advantage. “Princess and the pea,” I mutter, just loud enough that he’ll hear me.
“Whatever you say, kitten.”
Groaning under my breath with my brows furrowed, I lean back to peek in on Josiah and what he’s doing. He’s always calling me a kitten. He thinks it’s hilarious to draw comparisons to the way I react and how a kitten would do something similar, but I’m not a tiny fluffball. I’m a woman!
“I’m not a goddamn cat,” I grouse. “I’m going to spit in your food.”
Josiah’s shoulders shake as he chuckles, still facing his monitors. “I’m sure it wouldn’t be the first time.”
“That’sgross!I wouldn’t do that, and the fact that you’re just completely comfortable with that is weird!” I have never spit in someone’s food before.
