Page 50 of Hush, Little Baby

“I’m not hungry,” I murmur quietly.

“Maybe not, but won’t you feel better later with at least a little something in your stomach? I won’t make you eat all of it, so just order whatever sounds good, okay?”

I nod meekly, face red. I don’t understand how he already knows my poor eating habits. That shouldn’t be possible so quickly. It’s not fair at all.

Avoiding eye contact with both men, I roll over slightly to see the menu better. Nikolaus holds it open in front of me, one large hand still petting me, and I blink at the list of food. Most of the listed options come with what sounds like enough food to feed a small family. There’s also a lot of stuff with salmon. And while rich people must enjoy eating fish for breakfast, I most certainly do not.

While I read through, trying to find something that won’t result in a ton of wasted food, the two of them start talking.

In English this time, thankfully. Although part of me is curious to know what it was that they were speaking earlier. Even thinking back on it, I can’t pinpoint a language. In the guards’ mouths, it had sounded blunt and rough, the words shoved out in hard, ugly bursts while they grabbed at me. But when Nikolaus spoke it, it changed. He sounded cold and controlled, his voice low enough to make the words feel heavier, smoother, like they weren’t being shouted so much as aimed, like a weapon.

Part of me wonders what it would sound like if he were to use those words in a different situation, like how it would sound if he spoke them softly to me.

I’m not sure how I feel about that curiosity. I’m not sure how I feel about how nice it is to be on someone’s lap, or how weirdly calming it is to be left out of conversations because they’re going over details that aren’t my job to figure out.

My job is to pick out what I want to eat.

I hear bits and pieces of their conversation, but it sounds faraway as I focus on the menu. Constantine is telling Nikolaus that I don’t have any pets or roommates. He says something about my car, and something about “important papers.”

My stomach does a weird, twisty thing at that, because important papers could mean anything. Medical bills, insurance stuff, maybe even my birth certificate.

I should ask.

I know I should ask what he took. I should sit up and demand to know exactly what parts of my apartment they went through, and whether my neighbors saw, and whether Constantine judged the dishes in my sink or the laundry I’d left in piles or the stupid little nest I’d made on my bed because sometimes getting under the covers properly took too much effort.

But Nikolaus’s hand moves behind my ear again, his thumb pressing in a little circle at the soft place beneath the bone, and all the thoughts that had been stacked up in my head simply fade.

My eyes drift back to the menu.

Words.

So many words.

Omelet. Granola. Benedict. Compote. Artisanal. House-made. Seasonal. Fresh.

They all start looking like a fake language.

I blink hard, trying to make the letters behave, but they keep blurring and separating and floating around the page. My head feels full of warm cotton. Not sleepy exactly. Not the same way as before, when my body crashed and dragged me under against my will. This is different. Softer. Like I’m still awake, but not in the front of my brain anymore.

Constantine says, “There are four prescription bottles in the bag and two over-the-counter things that were beside the bed. I didn’t want to guess what mattered, so I brought all of it.”

“Good,” Nikolaus says.

His voice rumbles through his thigh and into my cheek.

I close my eyes for just a second.

I can feel the heavy robe around me, my hoodie bunched at my shoulder, the soft cartoon voices from the television, the shape of Nikolaus’s thigh beneath my head. His lap is so warm, and his fingers are in my hair. One of his hands is big enough to cover the back of my skull almost completely, and that should make me think about the guards again, about the hands that covered my mouth and held me down.

It doesn’t.

Or it does, but only for a second, and then his thumb strokes behind my ear again, and the memory slips away like something too heavy to keep holding.

Maybe because his hand doesn’t feel like theirs.

Maybe because I’m exhausted.

Maybe because I’m a deeply stupid person with a broken brain and no survival instincts.