same.” He sounded as tired and resigned as I felt. Would we live with this screaming fear for six months? Were we already so willing to accept it?
I sighed, relaxing the tension that had me gripping my pillow tightly to my chest, and my shoulders fell as I met his gaze. He must’ve seen my hesitation to go back to my room alone, my understanding that there was no way I’d be able to sleep now. Not alone.
“I’ll help you move your stuff in here if you want.” He sounded neither generous or annoyed, just tired.
I debated as deliberately as one can do in a state of terror in the middle of the night. Mom would not like me sleeping in the same room as a Tucker. But if he was going to kill me, he could just as easily walk down the hall to do it, and the man did not seem inclined to take the feud to that level. He’d actually been very kind so far. “Yeah, okay.”
We went to my room and gathered the sleeping bag and air mattress, laying them in the room Michael had been sleeping in, situating me against the wall farthest from him in order to preserve at least the feeling of privacy. I tried to tell myself it wasn’t comforting to see his things there, to know I wasn’t alone.
“This okay?” He asked, smoothing the bag and standing to look down at it.
I dropped the pillow to the head of the bag and gazed up at him. “Yeah. Thank you.”
“It’s fine,” he said. His voice was toneless, and I still couldn’t tell how he felt about having me crashing into his room in the middle of the night like a terrified toddler. At least I wasn’t demanding a story or to sleep with him.
A few minutes later, we were both on the ground in the dark, the not-quiet of the old house settling around us again as I tried to forget the high-pitched misery of the scream I’d heard. I didn’t know what it was, but I was more willing than I’d ever been before to believe in ghosts. Shrieky, wailing ghosts.
The rest of the night passed eventually, the long hours of my wakefulness consumed by my thoughts of the choices I’d made recently, and those that had been made for me, punctuated by the steady sound of Michael’s soft breathing. Something about the constant and reassuring sound gave me the space I needed to consider all that had happened in my life. Luke’s departure after so many years together. My near-breakdown in my boss’s office. My decision to come back to Singletree. And now this. The choice to move into a deserted and dilapidated house with a man I didn’t know and had been bred to detest.
Life was strange, and mine recently had been a steady string of disappointment, but I thought that was because I’d allowed myself to depend completely on someone else to fulfill me, to make me happy. A man.
And I would never make that mistake again. I’d find my own happiness without having to depend on anyone else—especially a man. I’d learn a few things working on this house, sell it as fast as was possible, and take the money right back to New York to fund the life I should have been living. On my own. Independent.
When shades of orange and red filtered across the walls as the sun rose through the dense trees outside, I heard Michael begin to stir. After a few minutes, he whispered across the room.
“You awake?”
“Good morning,” I returned.
There was something intimate and fragile about whispering through the quiet morning air, and I found myself liking it.
“Did you sleep?”
“Not really.”
“I did,” he said, and I could hear the rustle of his sleeping bag as he stretched. “No more screaming, right?”
“I didn’t hear any more.”
“That’s good. We’ll figure out what it is,” he said. “It’s probably just some bird outside or something.”
Except we both knew perfectly well that sound had been inside the house. Still, it was sweet of him to try to comfort me.
We each lay quietly for a few moments, soaking in the sleepy atmosphere of morning, of that fuzzy border between sleep and wakefulness.
“Addie?” Michael said after a few minutes of silence.
“Yeah?”
“I’m glad we’re doing this,” he said.
And though I didn’t answer, his simple statement and the honesty it contained made me happy in some inexplicable way.
I actually managed to doze for another half hour or so, and Michael