Page 15 of Her Reluctant Protector
"You can't sleep in that chair again."
"The chair is fine."
"The chair is from the Coolidge administration and you're shaped like a person, not a coat rack." She folds her arms. "There's one working bed. We're adults. This is ridiculous."
She's right. This doesn't make it a good idea.
"I'll take the floor."
"You'll take half the bed and stop being dramatic about it."
She disappears upstairs before I can construct an argument, which I suspect is the point.
One bed. Brass frame. Cheerful yellow flower sheets. Her renovation binder on the nightstand. My tactical bag against the far wall, zipped and squared.
She takes the window side. I take the door side. Professional rationale: I'm between her and the primary entry point. The personal rationale is something I am not examining.
Kari emerges from the bathroom in an oversized T-shirt and plaid sleep shorts, hair damp, smelling like whatever shampoo she uses — something clean and sharp that has been steadily eroding my ability to think in straight lines since I arrived.
She looks at the bed. She looks at me.
"Okay," she says. "We're doing this properly."
She opens the closet. Four pillows. A bolster. A rolled-up quilt.
She constructs the wall.
Bolster first, lengthwise, dead center. Pillows staggered for coverage. Quilt rolled tight along the base to prevent structural failure.
"There," she says. "The Great Wall of Appropriate Professional Boundaries."
"It's very thorough."
"Thank you. I considered adding a moat, but the clawfoot tub was too heavy to move."
She climbs in. The mattress dips — the springs have the tensile strength of wet pasta — and the pillow wall shifts toward me. She adjusts the bolster. Pats it.
"This is your side," she tells the bolster. "Hold the line."
The bolster does not respond. This is the first inanimate object in the building that has declined to engage in conversation with her, and I find its restraint admirable.
I lie down. Back straight. Arms at my sides. Staring at the ceiling fan.
"Goodnight, Liam."
"Goodnight."
She turns off the lamp. Darkness, and every other sense compensates. The creak of the mattress as she settles. The whisper of sheets. Her breathing — slow, steady, gradually deepening toward sleep.
The pillow wall holds. For a while.
Her body shifts in the night — incremental, inevitable. One hand migrates over the bolster. Her knee finds the gap between two pillows. The wall is breached. Not dramatically — just slow encroachment. The way a vine grows through a fence.
I don't sleep.
Not because of the threat. Perimeter secured, deadbolt engaged, windows checked. The stalker isn't coming tonight — the pattern suggests daytime access, not nocturnal entry. Professionally, there is nothing keeping me awake.
Personally, there is a woman six inches from me who talks to power tools and names insulation and built a pillow fortress on a shared bed like it was a load-bearing renovation project, and my hand remembers the width of hers, and my thumb remembers her pulse, and I am in significant operational trouble.
