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His hands drift upwards, and I do nothing to stop him as he gently frees my hair from the blanket.
“Beautiful,” he says.
I give him a blank stare.
“Your hair, Ange. It’s beautiful. Like an angel.”
I feel my face flame at that.
“I’m serious. You’ve basically got a halo.” He brushes a curl behind my ear, and the heat of his fingers scorches my cool cheek. I want to lean into him—his warmth, his wit, his wisdom—but I’ve done that before and it left me in ruins.
I lean my head back ever so slightly away from him. Carter is Carter though, so of course he notices, and immediately removes his hand from my face.
“Sorry,” he says.
“No, don’t be. Who doesn’t like being called an angel,” I joke. “And I was really cold.”
He smiles at me, and it’s not a full grin like before. It’s more subdued, like he’s holding something back. I add it to my mental folder now labeled “The Chink in Carter’s Armor,” and promise myself I’ll obsess over what it means later.
“What should we do?” I ask.
“I guess we could turn in early? Hal doesn’t have any curtains in here so we’ll be rising with the sun. And if the storm is clear in the morning then we can get an early start hiking back to town.”
“Oh,” I say, my anxiety over our sleeping arrangements coming back in full force. The futon is small, but we could probably both squeeze onto it. Problem is, if we do that, I’ll probably never fall asleep. “I’ll sleep on the floor,” I blurt.
“What? No, Ange, we’ll both fit fine.”
I’m not sure how to explain. “It could be a king bed and it wouldn’t matter,” I mutter.
Carter takes a step back from me, and his eyebrows fold in a bit. I’ve hurt him.
“No, not like that. It wouldn’t matter if it were you, or anyone else. I have insomnia. I can’t sleep next to anyone.” I feel myself blush again. The only people who know about this are my moms and Cat. It’s not anything to be ashamed of, but I’m a private person.
“But all those years ago, when we?—
“I was up for nearly the whole night,” I explain.
“I remember it took you a while to go to sleep. Or maybe I just thought you had. But we stayed up talking for hours and I guess I drifted off.”
“Yes, that’s what happened. I really appreciated you staying up with me though, even if you didn’t know what it meant,” I admit. It’s the one part of that memory that I treasure: having someone wait out most of the long night with me. HavingCarterby my side when I would normally be tossing and turning, anxious and alone.
“How do you handle it? Being a nurse and not being able to sleep?” He cuts right to the heart of the issue, as always.
“A strict routine. I normally get seven or eight hours, but I have to be regimented about it. I exercise after work. I listen to white noise. I wear ear plugs.”
“That makes sense,” he says. “I can see why a routine would help. I’m having trouble sleeping at the moment, too.”
I shoot him a quizzical look.
“My brain is just…alwayson,” he says. “It’s full of my research, and I can’t get it to shut up.”
“I know what you mean. After a long day at the hospital my brain is firing at a million miles a minute just trying to process everything that happened during the day.”
“What’s the craziest thing that you’ve ever seen in the ER?” he asks.
I can’t help but roll my eyes, because everyone always asks that. “I mean the craziest things are always the most traumatic,” I say. “Physically, I mean. Things like car accidents.”
He’s quiet, digesting this for a few moments. And I find I like his silent respect, his reflection, I imagine, on what it must mean for me—to be witness to so much pain, but also to be there helping to fix it.
