What are you doing, Angelina? Lying here counting ceiling cracks like that's going to change anything?
What else am I supposed to do?
Live. You could actually live, for once, instead of just surviving.
The thought lands like a verdict I didn't see coming. Eight years. Eight years of surviving, of building walls and checking locks and counting Chesca's breaths and never, not once, letting myself want anything that wasn't safe and controlled and carefully managed.
And now I have twenty-four days. Maybe less.
What if you die without ever feeling alive again?
I'm out of bed before I've made the conscious decision to move. My feet carry me across cold hardwood, out my door, down the hall toward the landing where the stairway meets the upstairs halls.
This isn't about sex. Not really. Not tonight.
This is about mortality and fear and the desperate, clawing need to feel something other than the countdown ticking in my chest.
The monitoring station door is closed.
I stop. The blue light still bleeds underneath, so he's in there, but the door is closed and it wasn't closed last night. Last night it was open like an invitation, like he was waiting for me to come to him.
I'm wearing an oversized t-shirt I stole from a college ex-boyfriend whose last name I'd have to think about to remember and the sleep shorts I've worn to bed for three years running. My hair is down because sixteen hours of pins left my scalp aching. My feet are bare and the hardwood is cold and I am not dressed for anything other than what a woman wears when she is going to bed alone on a Tuesday night.
Maybe he doesn't want you to come.
Maybe last night was enough.
Maybe—
I knock. Soft, barely audible, but in the silence of the sleeping house it sounds loud.
Footsteps. The door opens.
Cole fills the doorway, backlit by the glow of monitors. His expression shifts when he sees me and something flickers across his face that I can't read, there and gone before I can name it.
"Angelina."
Just my name. No question, no invitation. Just my name hanging in the air between us like a held breath.
"I can't sleep."
"Neither can I."
We stand there, the door between us like a threshold neither of us is sure how to cross. He's in a black t-shirt and cargo pants, still dressed like he's expecting a threat, still wound tight with the tension that hasn't left his shoulders since this morning.
"I keep thinking about Patricia Brown," I say. "About her grandchildren. About how she was supposed to retire next year."
His jaw tightens. "That's not going to be you."
"You don't know that."
"I know that I won't allow it."
"You can't control everything, Cole." My voice comes out harsher than I intended. "You couldn't control someone walking into my chambers while we were… while I was…" I stop. Take a breath. "You can't promise me twenty-five days. You can't promise me anything."
He doesn't argue. That's worse, somehow. The fact that he knows I'm right and won't lie to me about it.
"I don't want to be alone." The words fall out before I can stop them. "I know that's— I know I shouldn't be here. I know last night was—"