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Maybe he did tell me, and I was too sleepy to remember.

No.

I’d remember.

I think.

The bath left my head strange afterward, making everything feel soft and floaty, like my head was full of cotton candy.

I sift through my memory of what happened after he dressed me and carried me back to bed. I remember he helped me drink water, and fed me some strawberries and cheese before tucking me in and kissing my forehead.

He told me to rest, but I don’t remember him saying anything about leaving or having to go do something.

My pulse hammers faster now, a frantic rhythm in my ears. What if something happened to him? Adrien works for people who kill people. He kills people. What if—

My stomach turns.

No.

No, that’s stupid.

Adrien doesn’t seem like someone who gets killed easily. He wouldn’t. Not with me here, right?

Another cramp twists low in my abdomen, a burning hot knot of pressure that makes me gasp. I squeeze my thighs together until the muscles tremble, pressing my free hand hard against the ache.

“Please,” I whisper.

I don’t know how long I sit there. Five minutes can feel like half an hour when you’re waiting. Half an hour can become an entire afternoon if there’s nothing outside you to measure it against.

I keep looking at the door until my eyes ache from focusing on the same spot.

My thoughts start filling the silence.

Maybe Adrien did leave.

Maybe he looked at me after the bath and realized what happened was a mistake. Heat crawls into my face even though nobody is here to see it.

He had looked at me so strangely afterward—gentle, but maybe shocked too.

I think of his voice in the bath, the things he called me, and how he said I was his. He called himself my Daddy, which I still don’t fully understand, but—but what if he hadn’t meant any of it?

Maybe once I was asleep, he had time to really think. Maybe he realized I’m too young, too inexperienced, and too much work.

Maybe he decided it was disgusting that I reacted the way I did.

He’s forty. He’s probably been with people who know what they’re doing—people who don’t cry afterward, people who don’t need to be dressed and carried to bed because their legs feel weird and shaky, people who don’t clutch their childhood toy while being fed.

I didn’t reciprocate. Is that it? Was there an expectation that I missed?

My eyes begin to sting.

Stop it.

He might not have even left at all.

“Adrien!”

Still nothing.