Lochlan's just-before-sleeping and newly-awake states are mirror images of his drunk one. The words roll out uncensored, unchecked and unvarnished. He doesn't bathe everything in logic and common sense. It's where I see who he is instead of who he wants me to think he is. I don't understand why he feels there needs to be a difference between the two, I'm pretty sure that's habit more than anything else. As long as she's okay, happy/fed/warm/safe/stimulated/learning then he could rest easy in his role as the Responsible Adult, something he mostly faked and constantly slipped from, a tenuous grasp that turned out to be non-existent and he wasn't actually holding on to the right rope after all.
He says things like:
Almost there. Last time he was gone I got you out of here and you thought you were in control. So close, Peanut brittle. So close.
I wasn't going to turn down this chance. So you can tell me I'm being disloyal but I'm not here for him and we all know it.
I think they all think I don't matter but look at me. Where am I and where are they?
and this:
I'm sorry about Ben's letter, Bridget. I am but I'm not but I am. You once asked me to let you go so that you and Jake could be happy and I did. I hated every second of it but I went and tried to live like a regular normal person because I knew it was the best thing for you. Why won't Ben or Diabhal, for that matter, do what's best for you?
I'm too tired to do this now so I shrug. I don't know. I close my eyes. Lochlan spans one hand across the small of my back and wraps the other hand around the back of my head, clutching me to him and we fall asleep the way we always used to on the cot in the trailer that wasn't quite thirty inches wide.
Now the bed is seventy-two inches wide but look, I can still feel his heart beating harder than my own. I feel his blood pumping through his veins across his skin against mine. I smell toothpaste and kerosene. I feel his breathing slow to match my own and I fight to stay awake so that I can watch him sleep, because it seems as if that's the one time he isn't fighting everything and everyone.
What he wants is so simple and straightforward. It's not much to ask for, as he has never been one to ask for very much at all.
