Page 56 of Drowning in Darkness

The sound comes again. Slow and unhurried.

I round the corner, calculating sight lines, and freeze. Stephanie stands halfway along the hall. I lower the gun, and for a second, I simply stare. She’s wearing my black Oxford I abandoned over the back of a chair earlier today. I hadn’t even noticed it had disappeared. The sleeves swallow her hands, and the hem brushes the tops of her thighs, leaving a strip of skin before her legs are covered by thick cream knee-high socks.

Her hair looks as if she fought a pillow and lost.

She looks... comfortable. Rumpled. Devastating.

The thought lands with force. She shouldn’t look comfortable wearing my clothes. She certainly shouldn’t look this… No. Nope. I shut that train of thought down before it gathers speed.

Her eyes are open, but they’re wrong. Unfocused. Looking through the darkness instead of at it.

“Stephanie?”

Nothing. No flinch. No wary glance over her shoulder. No careful count of exits she unconsciously does every time she enters a room. She drifts past me as though I don’t exist. She reaches the polished wooden arch leading back to the living space.

“You forgot to lock the back door again,” she murmurs, the words sleep-soft and not meant for me.

I swipe a hand down my face, and my shoulders droop. Sleepwalking. Again. Christ. I replace the gun in its hiding place and return to find her brushing her fingers over the marble countertops in my kitchen. Every instinct tells me to wake her, but logic reminds me not to startle someone whose mind isn’t entirely here. So I follow, keeping enough distance that she won’t walk into me if she turns, but close enough to catch her if she falls.

She pads around the kitchen and flips the kettle on. Her fingers curl around the handle before she pauses, frowning faintly. “I can never remember where you keep the big mugs. The ones built for caffeine fixes, not pretty photos,” she says, a smile tugging at her mouth.

It’s small. Sleepy. Entirely unguarded. I’ve never seen her smile like that, and this woman smiles a lot. But this unguarded and unfiltered one steals something from the room and gives something precious back that I don’t think anyone else could replicate. It makes my house feel warmer than it has any right to at two in the morning, like midnight sunshine.

“I moved them,” I answer.

She nods as though that makes perfect sense. “I know.” She glances toward me. “You always rearrange things.”

Her gaze lingers on my face. For one impossible second, it feels as though she’s peering into me, like she has the power to reach inside my chest and cradle my charred soul as if examining for fissures of light.

She smiles again. “There you are.” My pulse stutters. “You disappeared.”

I don’t answer because I’m not convinced she’s talking to me. She steps closer until only a couple of feet separate us. In daylight, she avoids my space. Under the cover of darkness, she seems unaware of etiquette rules at all.

“I knew you’d come back,” she whispers. Her hand lifts, and I wait for her to pause when she realizes it’s not Prince Charming in front of her but the Big Bad Wolf. Instead, the tips of her fingers brush lightly against my jaw.

The touch lasts a few heartbeats. Gentle. Absent-minded. The kind of touch given without fear. Without calculation.

My heart thunders, and my pulse pounds in my ears.

Her hand falls away as she sighs. “I don’t like sleeping. That’s when they find me.” The warmth leaves the room when her smile disappears, as though someone has blown out a candle. “Hunter keeps saying it wasn’t my fault.” She stares at the floor. “I only wanted them to stop moving.”

A long silence stretches out, and my breath locks itself in my lungs. I’m frozen in place as she shares a part of her soul.

“They said there were six.” Her brow pinches. “If only that were true. Safety is a human concept we dreamed up to help us sleep at night. That’s the reason I don’t sleep. I’m not safe. Not really.”

The words are both confusing and clarifying, and I’m formulating a thousand possible explanations, each more horrifying than the last. An ache echoes beneath my ribs with her belief that safety doesn’t exist. Somewhere along the way, the world convinced her it was temporary, something that could be snatched away without warning, and I don’t know whether I hate the men responsible or the people who allowed her to believe that more.

“Come on,” I mutter, keeping my voice even. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

She nods without hesitation, and for a moment, I think it’s going to be that simple. She turns away from the kitchen and heads down the corridor with unhurried steps, the oversized shirt brushing against her bare thighs every time she moves. My gaze catches on the sight before I can drag it elsewhere, and irritation flares, directed at myself.

It’s a shirt. My shirt. The same one that’s hung in my closet for years without incident until tonight when it chose violence.

She walks straight into my open bedroom without hesitation, making me frown. “Stephanie.” No response. “Wrong room, sweetheart.”

She crosses the room as though I haven’t spoken, folds back the covers on the opposite side to where I sleep, climbs into my bed, and curls onto her side before pulling the blankets up beneath her chin with the contented sigh of someone who has finally reached exactly where she intended to be.

I remain rooted in the doorway, wondering whether this is some elaborate punishment for every questionable decision I’ve made. “Stephanie,” I try again, my voice a little harder this time as I move closer to the bed. “You’re in the wrong room.”