Page 84 of The Words Beneath the Noise

“You traded for good tea?”

“I was worried you'd need it when I got back. Didn't know it would be because you'd spent the night gallivanting around London being reckless.”

“I wasn't gallivanting.”

“You were absolutely gallivanting.” He moved toward the door, then paused with his hand on the knob. “Art.”

“Yes?”

“I'm glad you're safe. Even if I want to shake you for scaring me.”

“I'm glad you came back. Even if I want to shake you for not telling me you were leaving.”

He smiled then. A real smile, rare and warm, and it did something to my chest that I didn't have words for.

“Get some rest,” he said. “I'll see you in a few hours.”

He was gone before I could respond, the door clicking shut behind him. I stood in the middle of my room, exhausted and shaky and overwhelmed, and tried to process everything that had just happened.

Tom had talked to his family. Had spent three days thinking about what he felt. Had come back determined to stop pretending.

And I'd spent the same three days spiraling into old patterns, seeking comfort in dangerous places, nearly destroying everything because I couldn't stand the loneliness.

We were a pair. Two broken men fumbling toward something neither of us knew how to name.

But maybe that was alright. Maybe naming it could come later. For now, we had this: promises made in dawn light, handson faces, foreheads pressed together in the space between one heartbeat and the next.

Together. Whatever that meant.

I fell into bed still wearing my clothes and slept without dreaming.

SEVENTEEN

CRIMSON SNOW

TOM

The bathroom floor was cold against my back. Tile and grout pressing into my shoulder blades, the smell of carbolic soap sharp in my nostrils, and somewhere far away the sound of carols drifting from the chapel.

Silent night, holy night.

Couldn't remember how I'd got here. One moment I'd been standing at the back of the service, watching candlelight flicker across faces lifted in song. The next, Danny's voice in my ear, clear as the day he'd died.Tom. Tom, I can't feel my legs. Tom, please.

And then I was running.

My hands wouldn't stop shaking. Pressed them flat against the tile, tried to ground myself the way the medical officer had taught me back in France. Five things I could see. Four things I could touch. Three things I could hear.

Couldn't see anything. Eyes squeezed shut against images that weren't real, weren't here, weren't now. Danny's face. The boy in the window. Dozens of others, crowding in like they'd been waiting for me to crack.

All is calm, all is bright.

Nothing was calm. Nothing was bright. My chest had caved in, lungs refusing to work properly, each breath a fight against wire wrapped tight around my ribs. Cold sweat soaked through my shirt despite the chill. Heart hammering so hard I could feel it in my throat, my temples, the tips of my fingers.

This was worse than usual. This was the kind that sent men home in pieces, the kind that got you labelled shell-shocked and shuffled off to some hospital where doctors asked useless questions and nurses looked at you with pity.

Couldn't let anyone see. Couldn't let them know how broken I really was.

Footsteps in the corridor. Quick, purposeful. I pressed harder against the floor, willing myself invisible, willing whoever it was to walk past.