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“I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”
“No.” I can’t catch my breath at first. “You can’t say that to me.”
“I said it to you, and I mean it.”
“You really—you feel like that about me? You want me to have what I want even if I’m dead?”
“Baby,” he says, and doesn’t say anything else.
That’s ayes.
I want to tell him I love him, that whatever else has happened, I love him, that he’s the only one I want in my bed or in my dreams, but I don’t want to say it here. Not when it’s under duress. Not from him, but from my own damn brain.
But then…there might not be another chance.
Still. Saying it feels like resigning myself to the worst possible outcome, and I can’t.
Hercules stands and turns off the water. He makes it seem easy to get a useless person out of the shower along with him and dry both of us off. We’re dressed before I know it. He’s even brought a chair in so I can sit while he works a wide-toothed comb through my hair. It’s starting to dry by the time he sets the comb aside.
“Time to go back to your special room.”
“It’s a family room.” He picks me up, ignoring my argument. “There’s nothing special about it.”
“You should sell tickets to people to let them experience absolute darkness, like they do at national parks.”
“Which national parks?”
“The ones with caves. That’s what that room is like.”
“It’s just a room.”
“Yeah,” he says with a laugh. “A room with the fanciest furniture known to mankind, and a bed that pulls out of the wall, and absolutely nothing that might suddenly light up.”
“Are you…okay in there?” I’m probably an asshole, because it didn’t occur to me that the darkness might not be comforting for him. Like…not at all. “Some people can’t handle the dark like that. If it’s bothering you—”
“Baby.” Heat. Every time he says it. I never in my life imagined being calledbaby,or letting a man say it so many times. “Fuck that.”
“I could sit with you instead,” I offer. He’s moving at a steady pace, and then we’re at the stairs.
“No, you can’t.”
“Um…what?”
“You can’t sit with me. You have to sit with your dad. But I’ll hold your hand. Obviously.”
“It’s…not obvious? Why would I have to sit with him and not you?”
“I’d show you, but I think—and I’m not being a callous bastard—that looking at a phone screen would kill you. So I won’t be doing that.”
“You can see it on that app?” I don’t know why I’m so appalled. “Wait—”
“You have a new patch on. Don’t worry about it.”
The patches last ten days at a time and communicate my brainwaves to the app. Normally, I don’t care. It’s a peace of mind thing, and mainly for everybody else. I can feel what’s happening in my brain, and if I can’t, then it’s too late.
“Okay…what does the app show, then?”
“The wave has been weird since I got to California. Don’t you ever look at it?”
