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He pulled my hands close to him, then wrapped his arms around me. The shivering got worse; I was shaking so hard, he knew it wasn’t only from the cold.
“Do you want your pills?” he said.
It took me a while to answer. “No. Just stay with me.” He held me tighter, resituating us so he could lean back and I could lay against him. With every passing second, I felt guiltier. It killed me that all it took was one little incident — one goddamn trigger could destroy my self-control, my courage, my logic.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “Grab that blanket.” He pointed to a thick fleece blanket folded on the back of the couch. I spread it over us and lay against his chest again, listening to the steady beat of his heart.
“Good boy,” I whispered, and he squirmed beneath me, wrapping his arms around me a little tighter.
“I love you.” He scratched his fingers through my hair, and I closed my eyes. It felt so good to be held.
“I love you, too.”
There was a creak on the stairway, then Vincent and Jason shuffled into the living room. They both had blankets around their shoulders, and Vince looked half asleep already. Jason was dragging his pillow in one hand.
They both settled down on the couch, and I frowned as I watched them. “What are you doing?”
“I thought we were having a sleepover in the living room,” Vincent said, stifling a yawn halfway through the sentence. He collapsed onto the couch, stretching out his limbs until his bare toes were shoved against Lucas’s side. Jason lay down beside him, the two of them sharing his pillow.
“You don’t have to do that,” I said. Lucas sleepily patted my head.
“With all due respect, stop talking,” he said. “Let us take care of you.”
“If you think you need to sleep down here to keep watch, then that’s what we’ll do,” Jason said, buried beneath his blanket. “I enjoy sleeping on the couch.”
Soon enough, Haribo and Jojo wandered in too. Jojo made a brief attempt to lick my face, then settled herself with a heavy sigh on the carpet. Bo jumped up on the couch and curled himself at Jason’s feet.
“Jess should be here,” Vincent said softly. But he was only stating what we were all thinking.
17 - Jessica
It was strange to beback home, sleeping in my own bed. It felt too cold, too empty, when I slipped into it that night. After tossing and turning for hours, I managed to wedge enough pillows around myself to give the illusion that I was snuggled between the boys, and finally got some sleep.
The next morning, I awoke to four “good morning” texts in the group chat. It made me smile, but God, I already missed them.
What had happened to me? Where had the independent, didn’t-need-a-man-let-alone-four version of Jessica go? That version of me had been lonely and anxious, haughty and judgmental. But she’d been pretty damn untouchable too, and life behind a barrier made a lot of things simpler.
