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“I understand,” Everly replied, as if it were a vow.
And maybe it made sense that she was barefoot now, standing here on the edge of the world in front of Blue, because it brought her back to that night a few weeks ago when she’d also been terrified. Barefoot and outside herself. She pressed her feet harder into the wooden planks beneath her, again, and told herself she felt steadier when she did.
But the truth was, the only thing that really made her feel steady was the way Blue regarded her. Intent and serious. Unflinching.
Some kind of alarm rang in her head, but she ignored it. She hadn’t felt steady in so long that it felt like a gift, here in the middle of this strange, bright night. In this odd place so far away from everything she knew and anyone who knew her. With a man who was nothing like the comic book hero she’d conjured up in her head during her endless drive, but seemed instead like something she’d dreamed up just to fit the rugged backdrop of thisisolated place, so still at this hour except for the lapping of the water against the rocky shore that it seemed to quiet her, too.
Or maybe that was just Blue.
“Every single detail, Everly,” he said again, and this time it was more like an order than a request, but she liked that, too. “Breath by breath.”
Four
Everly told herself that all she had to do was tell her story. There was no reason to feel as if this were a confession, no matter how Blue was watching her, his big arms crossed over his chest and that stoic expression on his face.
This was what she wanted, she reminded herself. This was why she’d come here.
“That night I went to bed early because I had a big presentation the next day,” she told him, letting the memories wash over her. Not holding them at bay the way she normally did. “But I woke up again sometime after midnight.”
“What time is ‘sometime’?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t figure out why I was awake, and I lay there for a while, trying to figure out why my heart was beating so fast. I don’t know how long I did that, but when I looked at the clock, it was one fifty-two.”
“That’s very specific.”
“It’s burned into my head.”
Branded, more like. Everly almost reached up to rub her fingers over the welt she was sure must be there on her forehead, broadcasting the last moment her life was anything like normal to anyone who cared to look, but stopped herself. Barely.
“You often wake up in the middle of the night?”
“No. I usually sleep like the dead.” That struck her as unfortunate phrasing, and she cleared her throat, but Blue’s gaze remained impassive. She found that encouraging, somehow. “The minute my head hits the pillow, I’m out until my alarm goes off the next morning.”
She didn’t tell him how strange it had been this last month to personally witness all those dark, narrow hours she usually slept through. She didn’t try to explain what it was like to sit up, hollow-eyed and half-panicked, staring at her roommate’s empty bed at three forty-five in the morning, willing it to be full again.
Things were different in the middle of the night. Time was too round, too broad. The clock was her enemy, slow and sluggish. Every hour seemed soft and insubstantial, and still the minutes barely inched by. Shadows seemed more real and far more threatening. Dreams and waking tangled in on themselves.
And all the insomnia in the world hadn’t brought Rebecca back.
“That something your roommate would have known? That you sleep easy and don’t wake up?”
Everly considered that. “Rebecca and I were friendly, sure. We weren’t, you know, best friends or anything. I don’t know if we discussed sleep patterns.”
“It was a yes or no question.”
“Yes, then.” Everly tried not to glare at him. She thought he could save her, it was true. Or help her, anyway. But that didn’t mean he was required to be overly nice while he did it. It was ridiculous that she should feel that caving sensation in her belly. As if he was hurting her feelings. As if her feelings had anything to do with this in the first place. “Rebecca and I had been roommates for a year. More than a year. It’s safe to say she knows my sleeping habits, yes.”
“Do you know hers?”
Everly hated that he made her feel like a liar. It was that steady, unemotional way he was studying her. As if she was as crazy as the Chicago detectives had told her she was, and he was waiting for her to show it.
But whether or not she was crazy, and whether or not he thought so, she still had to answer his question. “Rebecca’s more erratic. Sometimes she stays up really late binge-watching entire series on Netflix. It wasn’t unusual to find her on the couch in the morning, still watching something she’d started the night before. But it was just as normal for her to go to bed at a relatively decent hour. And then sometimes she would stay out all night. At a friend’s or a boyfriend’s. You know.”
“So we can probably assume that she knew what was normal for you, too.”
“I’m not lying,” Everly gritted out.
For a moment, that hard gaze of his softened. Even his mouth looked like something other than granite. And Everly had to blink back the excess moisture that flooded the backs of her eyes. She told herself it was the crisp breeze off the ocean, salty and cool.