A minute later, he comes out and walks over to the bed. He stops beside it, looking at me for a long moment. His blue eyes are tired but clear.
“That’s why,” he whispers.
“Why what?”
He shakes his head. “I fell asleep with you but…” He shakes his head again, purses his lips, and lifts his fingers to his forehead.
“What?” I whisper, as he rasps, “I can’t sleep.”
I see his Adam’s apple bob as his brows draw together. “I…can’t.”
When his stark eyes meet my own, I feel my throat tighten.
“Does that happen every time?” I whisper.
He looks down at the mattress, rests his fingers on its edge. Then his gaze sears mine. “No more sleepovers.”
I look down at my hands, then back up at his vacant face. His beautiful face. “I think we should do sleep overs. For this reason. And others.” My face burns.
He’s looking at me, but I can’t read his face.
“I can wake you up from square one next time, right when you first start dreaming.”
He looks away, toward the fireplace. His jaw tightens.
“This is why I said I can’t,” he says flatly. Then, without looking back at me, he stalks across the room to a dresser by the fireplace and pulls a drawer open. He plucks a pair of boxer-briefs out, and as
I watch him pull them up his long legs and over his flawless ass, I try to process what just happened.
He ignored me.
Insecurity wells within me, but I push it down. Don’t be an idiot.
I scoot closer to the foot of the bed, closing a little distance between us.
“Are you embarrassed?” I ask, soft but clear.
His back stiffens, then he turns fully away from me and pulls another drawer open.
I feel a jolt of surprise, but then I realize: I shouldn’t. He’s a man—a man who had sex with me for the first time tonight—and he just lost his shit in front of me for not the first time. He might seem unaffected by a lot of things, but this isn’t going to be one of them. Of course he’s embarrassed. He shouldn’t be. But I get it.
“I used to have nightmares too. Every night, for almost a year. I have a weighted blanket at my house. I took all kinds of pills. I saw three therapists. I cried every night. One time I woke up with my hand around this Diet Coke can. I had squeezed it…and it had cut my fingers.” Remembering that makes me look down at my hand.
Silence blankets us. Then he turns to me, his face unreadable. “And now?”
“It’s a lot better. I don’t even take anything. Not that that matters. I just haven’t needed to. I can tell you a few things you could try to maybe help. You have to write the dreams out—like, in detail. Then you go back and edit them and change things so it’s more the way you would want it.”
Skepticism flashes through his features: there, then gone.
“But I can be with you. I can show you how to start. There’s sleeping together and there’s sleeping together, you know?”
I sit up a little straighter, giving him my pleasant wide-eyed face, the one I use around people I’m scared to snarile for. Then I realize what I did and give Barrett a tiny smile. “We can do both if you wanted to.”
“Why?” he asks tonelessly.
“Why do I want to?”
He blinks. Yes, that’s what he means. Why do I care? My chest squeezes. “Because I care.”