It always startsthe same way: a dirty couch in a disgusting living room. The cracked TV against the far wall. Two overflowing ashtrays on a half-destroyed coffee table. The orange glow of the streetlight outside slashing through broken cheap blinds.
I stand up, barefoot. The carpet is more dirt than rug, crunching under my feet as I walk: out of the living room, past the dark, dirty kitchen, toward the hallway.
I can’t stop myself. I can never stop myself, can never do anything different: touch the ragged edge of the hole in the drywall, glance into the bedroom where there’s a bare mattress on the floor, a single blanket on it. Up ahead, the hard white line of light beneath a door.
The smell is always first: iron and smoke, then the surge of adrenaline that always follows. The hallway wavers, like it’s suddenly uncertain but it stays: the light under the door, the cool metal knob under my fingers, the crunchy carpet under my feet and then finally, the adrenaline pulls me out.
I’m already sitting up. Gasping. Sweating. Everything tilts because I’m half here and half there, stuck somewhere between my own bed and the filthy couch; between the tidy organization of my bedroom and the crunchy carpet. I can still smell that scent and I feel like it’ll never go away.
Something touches my shoulder and then I’m half out of bed and Kat’s wrist is in my hand, and I’m holding it so tight I can feel her pulse under my palm, my own skyrocketing. I let it go just as fast.
“Silas,” she says.
“I’m fine.”
“Silas.”
“Go back to sleep,” I tell her. My heart’s pounding so fast I’m dizzy, my skin cool with sweat. I’m buzzing, everywhere. I should get up and go downstairs, have some water or something but I need another moment to stop feeling that carpet under my feet, that light under the door—
“I’m gonna touch your shoulder again,” she says. I think I nod, and she does, her hand so warm against my skin I shiver. “This okay?”
I swallow and make an affirmative noise. Slowly, she sits up until she’s behind me, on her knees, and her arms across my chest.
“You’re here,” she says, slowly, her voice like a dream of its own. “In your bed. In your house. It’s two-thirty in the morning and there’s a three-quarter moon outside.”
Something dark hurtles onto the bed and I flinch, but Kat doesn’t let me go.
“Your predator is here,” Kat says, and I hold out a hand to Beast, who butts her head against it.
“Hey,” I tell Beast, and my voice sounds strange, far away as I push my fingers through her thick fur. I pet her for a while, let Kat hold me.
“Is your wrist okay?” I ask, after some amount of time. A minute. An hour. I don’t know.
“I’m fine,” she says.
I let her hold me. After a while, we lie back down. I listen to her breathing.
* * *
I must fall asleep,because I wake up. I’ve slept later than usual—almost seven—but Kat is still asleep, on her side, dark hair fanned around her head. Glasses on the nightstand next to her, neatly folded. I feel like they’re watching me.
I’m downstairs, drinking coffee at my breakfast bar and mindlessly scrolling my phone, when Kat comes down in one of my old t-shirts and her own shorts. Her hair’s a little funny on one side, and there are pillow lines on her face, behind her glasses.
“Hey,” she says softly, and drops a kiss on my temple.
“Hey,” I answer. “There’s coffee. Mugs are—uh, next cabinet over.”
She grabs one out and then looks at it for a moment longer than necessary.
“Did you go to Dollywood?” she asks.
“Gideon’s obsessed,” I tell her. “We went last summer.”
She turns, frowns at me.
“Gideon?” she says. “Dolly Parton?”
I shrug, and she gives the mug a very considering look.