Page 98 of The Beast

“Try harder than that.”

David blows off my earlier suggestion that he stay in his old room—for which I’m grateful. He leaves a few minutes after Harper, but first making me promise to eat the leftover pizza for breakfast and extracting a handshake from Gabriel.

Now it’s just the two of us, alone in my living room with the ocean dark beyond the patio doors and everything still uncertain between us.

“I should go too,” Gabriel says. But he doesn’t move.

“I meant what I said,” I tell him. “About finding someone to talk to. About doing the work if you want us to have any chance at all.”

“I know,” he says. “I have to earn you back.”

I shake my head. “It’s not about earning me. It’s about healing yourself.” What I don’t say is that I’m afraid the damage goes too deep. And yet, that thing called hope still flutters.

He moves toward the door, but I take his hand before I can talk myself out of what might be a very bad idea. “Will you stay with me?” My voice is barely a whisper. “Just to sleep. To be here.”

He studies my face, as if looking for some hidden meaning. “You know I can’t. The nightmares—” He shakes his head. “I don’t trust myself. What if I hurt you?”

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

I hold his gaze. “Stay. Please.”

A long silence. Then something in him surrenders. “If that’s what you want.”

“It’s what I want.”

I take his hand and lead him to the bedroom, and we undress in the dim light—separately. Just two people getting ready for sleep.

When we climb into bed, he stays on his side, and I stay on mine. But after a moment, his hand finds mine under the covers. And I let him hold it.

It’s not forgiveness. It’s not even trust, not really.

But it’s a start. A tiny, fragile start.