Sherlock slept fitfully and ate hardly anything that day and the next. I didn’t press. I still didn’t remember more than bits and pieces of the days directly after my mother died. My strongest memory was thinking that everything was just too much of itself. It was too quiet. The boys were too loud. My bed was too soft. The shower too harsh on my skin. My tea was too hot and then too cold and definitely too bitter. The world felt like it was sensory overload, but hiding from it meant facing silence and my thoughts, and that was worse.
So I sat by his bed and brought him food, just in case. I waited and watched. I’d gotten so used to his fitful tossing and turning, I didn’t recognize when he was dreaming. When his huffs and grunts turned to cries and then Lock shouting my name, I didn’t know what to make of it at first. I sat frozen as he yelled for me twice, then came to myself enough to wake him up and hold his hand while he recovered.
“It’s okay,” I whispered. “Whatever you saw was just a dream.”
He scrubbed his eyes with his palms and cursed. It took him a few moments to go still, and then he sat up and stared at me, like perhaps I was just a dream as well.
I reached a hand up to smooth his hair. “Are you hungry yet?”
He shook his head and I dropped my hand to his forehead, which was still dewy from his nightmare.
“Do you want anything?”
“I want you to stay.”
“I won’t leave.”
He scooted closer, so he could grasp my hands. “I want you to stay with me.”
I stroked my thumbs across his knuckles and met his teary eyes. “I promise. I won’t leave.”
That didn’t seem to reassure him, but he didn’t ask again. Instead, he pulled me down onto his bed, facing him so he could keep watching me. I forced myself to be still and to watch him back, even when it was so painful, I thought maybe I wouldn’t be able to breathe soon.
Still holding both my hands in one of his, he reached up with the other to trace the way my hair framed my face. “I sometimes think I’m losing you.”
I said nothing. The word “temporary” was flashing through my mind again, and as much as I wanted to shoo those thoughts away, I wasn’t sure I could say the words he needed me to say right then—not confidently, anyway.
“But then, I suppose you can’t truly lose something that never belonged to you. Can you?”
I cleared my throat a little before answering. “No. You can’t.”
“And if I were to tell you that you could lose me?” he asked.
I wanted to answer that I knew I would. That as much as I wanted him to stay, I was sure he’d most likely hate me in the end. But instead I asked, “Could I?”
He attempted a smile but failed. “You ask the question, but you don’t think you could.”
I didn’t answer, even after his smile dropped and his hand came up to cup my cheek.
“Don’t go,” he said.
I looked up at the ceiling, traced a tiny crack that curved around one of the light fixtures and then out the door. “It was just a dream, Sherlock. I’m still here.”
“For how long?”
“For as long as you need.”
He attempted another smile and then leaned in to kiss my forehead. “I wish that were true,” he whispered against my skin.
I held my tears until he fell asleep, and when he did finally drift off, I couldn’t seem to cry anymore. I got up and went to the window. When I rested my forehead against the glass, I could just see my house from where I stood. It looked peaceful without me there. So did Sherlock, resting in his bed alone, finally at peace. All of this peace in the spaces without me. As if I was the reason for the chaos. As if maybe, if I just removed myself from everything . . .
I really was the worst kind of person. All of Lock’s pleading for me to stay, and I suddenly could only entertain thoughts of running away, of the endless relief it would be to just escape and start over. I could use Detective Mallory’s theory as my excuse, that all the recent happenings were because of some enemy I’d made without knowing. I could leave behind a note that said my leaving would end the chaos.
I could almost believe that, too, if it weren’t for one thing—my father’s obsession with my brothers. He’d never leave them alone, regardless of how far away I ran. I was nothing more than an obstacle to his prize when it came to those boys. And I could never leave them to him. Not while I still lived.
I supposed that meant I hadn’t lied to Sherlock. I’d stay. But it also meant he was wrong. I knew I could lose him. And I knew my father would probably be the reason why. Just then, watching Lock from the window seat, I wished so much that I were a different Mori, from a different family—that I could be Lock’s Mori, the girl he wanted me to be. I wished I had the freedom to stay only for him.
Chapter 19
I woke up sitting in the chair by Lock’s bed, my neck sore and my body feeling anything but rested. Lock was up and dressed already and waiting for me in his window seat. He met my eyes briefly, then looked back out the window and took a long drag of his cigarette.
I ran fingers through my hair and watched him for a bit before I asked, “Are you going somewhere?”