Page 123 of 56 Days
Oliver holds his breath.
“Mine too,” Ciara says softly, eventually. “But now... Now I don’t know what to do. Or think.”
“You don’t have to forgive me,” he says. “Know that. And being with me isn’t condoning what I did either. I won’t take it as that. You knowIdon’t condone it. Far from it. But it was a long time ago. And I take responsibility for it—Ididtake responsibility, I served my time. I live with the regret of that one afternoon every single day and I will until the day I die. But that doesn’t change what we have, what we’ve had these last few weeks. When you were here, that first night you came over, I felt...” The lump in his throat is back. He tries and fails to swallow it away. “I just want to feel thatagain, Ciara. I wish we could. So tell me what I need to do. Tell me what you need to hear from me to make you want to stay.”
She looks at him then in a way that reminds him of that first day by the canal, that first night here in this room, all the mornings since—
He reaches for her.
He pulls her into his arms, presses his cheek against hers, puts his head on her shoulder.
And, miraculously, she lets him.
Slowly but surely, he feels her relax her body into his, feels her arms reach around him, feels the squeeze of her hand on his back.
He’s too scared to move, in case it stops, goes away.
When she speaks, her voice is muffled against his chest.
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Can’t we just feel our way through this?” he whispers.
The nod of her head is practically imperceptible.
He dares find her lips with his. She hesitates at first but then responds, pulling him in, kissing him back.
It’s a weird day for both of them, stepping around each other as if on eggshells, not sure what the other one is feeling in any given moment, anxious that it’s not the same.
He’s too afraid to ask her if she’s going to stay that night, afraid that that will open up an opportunity for her to realize that coming back was a mistake, that she can’t be with him, that she can’t even stand to look at him. There’s already been a few times when she turns to him and inhales as if she’s about to say something, but then changes her mind and doesn’t.
And all the while, Oliver is trying to ignore his most pressing problem: he hasn’t had a proper night’s sleep in going on five days.
It’s taking its toll. He can feel himself shifting into the most dangerous stage, the one he usually tries to avoid: when the fabric of reality starts getting unpicked by unseen forces, when he starts to hear and see things that aren’t there. And then there are the moments of what he’s been told is calledmicrosleep—when hedoesfall asleep, but uncontrollably, and only for a few moments at a time—which usually signal that he’s reaching the end of the line, that he’s testing his limits, and that if he doesn’t take action soon things could get really, really bad.
He doesn’t want to have to check out now, on the day that Ciara came back, when things between them are so delicate and tenuous, but if hedoesn’tsleep, he could ruin everything inadvertently. So, as the sun starts its retreat from the sky, he admits to her that he’s going to have to take one of his pills.
“Oh,” she says. She sounds disappointed. “Should I leave? I can come back—”
“No, no. You can stay. If you want to, I mean.”
“What happens when you take one?”
“I conk out.” He smiles. “That’s about it.”
“And you’ll be, like, all right tomorrow, then?”
“A bit groggy,” he says. “But feeling one hundred percent less zombielike.”
She smiles athimnow, for the first time since the Truth, and it’s like a radiator inserted into his chest.
He takes her hand. “Thank you. For coming back. For still being here.” He leans over and kisses her, light but lingering, on the cheek.
When he pulls back, he sees that her eyes are filled with tears.
“Ciara—” he starts.
“Sorry,” she says, wiping at them. “I haven’t really slept either the last few days. I think I could probably do with a good night’s sleep too.”
