Sing for me again.

So if you see me losing sight

Of all the death in life
You'll find the peace in every time
I failed to see the death in mine

 

Lochlan wasn't sleeping when I came upstairs. He took his whiskey up to read and to give Everett and I a little time to talk after dinner. We eat so late now. Seven or eight and so it's nine by the time it's all cleaned up, if we're lucky and so by ten everyone is punchy and we've shifted to an ungodly early hour in the mornings too, much to my delight. I don't mind that but it is exceedingly difficult to carry on a conversation about my state of being when all I can do is yawn rudely in Everett's face. 

 

Meet me here at five am and we can have a surprisingly alert conversation, I tell him as he finally says we should give up, that it might be too late after all. 

 

Maybe not five. That seems extreme. 

I don't sleep remember?

And I didn't, because when Lochlan pulls me down into his arms I am suddenly wide awake in the familiar warmth. Lochlan smells like woodsmoke and candy. Like good whiskey and bottomless patience. Like home. And he gives me a kiss that reminded me I was home before tucking my head against his neck while he drives against me, his hands around my head, all of his weight crushing against me. I think we might burst into a shower of sparks or a slow burn but every time he pulls back enough for me to catch my breath cool air from the open windows rushes in to replace the heat from the fire that was burning when I came up, almost matching the heat we seem to create. 

 

He pulls me up into his lap and lifts me up over and over slowly and then finally lays me back on the quilt, crawling back onto me once more. My head is upside down. The flames dance downward and I am hypnotized as he drives. Finally he pulls me back up hard, head in his hand once more, fierce and finished and then he brings me with him as his final act and we lie back against the cool sheets while the curtains blow into the room gently from the wind, the only light coming from the fire now, which has died down significantly since I came to bed. I fall asleep easily. 

And wake up at five. 

 

The fire is long out. The Lochlan also out, still mired in dreams, flat on his back, sheets around his waist, his right hand flung out clutching my ribcage, protecting me from the dark in his sleep. 

I slide out from underneath his arm and he hardly shifts and go and take a long bubblebath. I hate Everett, I have decided, unless he wants to find a way to let me keep my memories but maybe lose the ghosts. Anything more and I will twist away until I can break into a flat run and after a few moments only then will I slow down, venturing a glance over my shoulder at what I may have left behind.