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Skylar: I’m always here if you need me

Oscar: I know that. But I know it was a lot too, and I am so grateful to know you

Skylar: Maybe now you can stop dodging me, eh?

Oscar: I am sorry about that

Skylar: Don’t be. It was hard for me to be around you for a while too

Oscar: it was?

Skylar: Yeah, and it fucked me up. Sometimes you’re the only person I can breathe around

Oscar: I will be that person whenever you need me to be

Skylar: I know. Get some sleep. I’ll come over tomorrow and check the stitches

Oscar: Thank you, my friend

Skylar goes offline, leaving me in the wake of the longest conversation we’ve had in months.

I put my phone down and go back to fiddling with the bracelets on Poet’s tanned arm, his and mine, and playing with his hair. It’s dried in soft, apple-scented waves. With the smell of smoke a distant memory, I can almost forget that he spent an entire night fighting a wildfire with nothing but a tractor, raw earth, and an absolute refusal to let the land burn.

But I cannot forget it. And as he sleeps on his uninjured side, his head on my chest, I find myself reaching for my phone again. Checking on Folk, checking the weather. Checking the news, even, and falling down a rabbit hole of clips and footage from last night’s apocalypse. I watch flames lick at Folk’s tractor. Watch him roll from the cab and Poet drag him to safety. Die inside as they run for their lives and the tractor ignites and I do not know how I survive it, let alone them.

Gods, I love this man. I love Poet, and I’m glad he knows now. Even through the stress of the last twenty-four hours, I feel lighter. Freer. I feel whole, and I hope he does too.

As though he senses my tumbling thoughts, he shifts in my arms. I set my phone down again and hold him as close as I dare with his razed forearms and the dressed wound on his bare torso. Thunder rolls. Rain pelts the farm and the scorched earth. I take a deep breath and close my eyes.

I sleep a while, with my nose buried in Poet’s wheat-gold hair. Wake up to find he has not moved, and that it’s afternoon and still raining.

My watch vibrates a warning.

I have to get up, take my insulin, and choke down some food, but I have never been less hungry in my life. I think I would rather have drowned a hundred times than see Poet so hurt and exhausted. So sick—it didn’t escape me that he was so unwell in the bathroom before I finally got him into bed.

It’s why I haven’t woken him to eat, only to drink.

But I will…soon.

My watch vibrates again.

I glower at it and ease away from Poet, cradling his head in my hand until I can slide a pillow beneath him.

It’s not seamless.

But he still doesn’t wake, and I wonder if, like Sol, this is what had to happen for him to truly find rest.

Either way, it’s hard to leave the bed. I trudge downstairs with heavy legs and find the sandwich Poet could not eat this morning.

I eat it while making him another. Brew coffee from the Lithuanian brand I left here some time ago.

It is the nectar of the gods and my numbers are stable. As it rains and rains and rains outside, I turn to go back upstairs, but a buzzing sound pulls me into the hallway.

Poet’s phone.

I dig from beneath a pile of folded clothes and see his sister’s beautiful face on the screen. She has coral-pink hair and the same eyes as Folk. Her tenacity, it seems, matches Poet.

The call rings out. A few messages ping through.