Used While I Pretended to Sleep novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Pancakes

At breakfast every man behaves normally, Denton takes her pulse for the tablets, and Byron sets a new double-dose bottle by her plate.

Byron did not let go of my hand.

He did not move it, either, and the stillness told me more than any word could have.

He had felt it.

He thought it was a reflex, I told myself.

Denton's fingers slid lower, and I stopped thinking about Byron's thumb.

I had touched myself in this bed on a hundred sleepless nights, quickly and in silence, ashamed afterward.

This was nothing like that.

Denton's touch was slow and patient and exact, and it climbed through me in long waves I could not hide.

"Her heart rate's up," Abel whispered. "She's dreaming."

"Probably," Denton said.

His voice was not steady anymore.

I turned my face into the pillow and bit down on it.

The pressure built until I thought my whole body would come off the bed, and then Denton pressed once, firmly, and it broke.

I shook through it with my mouth open against the cotton.

I let a long, drowsy moan out and tried to make it sound like sleep.

I don't know whether it did.

Nobody said a word for a while.

Then Abel laughed, low and pleased. "Damn. Dreaming about someone."

Denton took his hand away and wiped it, slowly, on the sheet by my hip.

When I dared look through my lashes, he was staring at his own fingers with his glasses in his other hand.

He looked wrecked.

"My turn," Abel said, and put his weight on the mattress.

"No."

Byron had not raised his voice.

He did not have to.

"That's the rule," he said. "Hands, above the waist, and Denton checks her. That's tonight. Nobody undresses her. Nobody goes further."

"You said we could."

"I said I'd tell you when."

"Ron."

"Out."

Abel stood. The bed rocked.

"You're the boss," he said, in a tone that said he wasn't staying one. "But it's a waste, a girl like that."

He walked out.

Tucker went after him without a word, and I heard him pull the door nearly shut.

Denton stayed long enough to straighten my shirt over my stomach, and to pull the blanket up to my chin.

He tucked it around my shoulder.

His hand shook on the cotton.

"Goodnight, Roxy," he whispered, and then he was gone.

The room was dark.

Byron sat on the edge of the bed, still holding my hand.

I listened to him breathe.

His breath came hard and uneven.

After a while he lifted my hand and pressed his forehead against my knuckles.

"I'm sorry, Rox," he said, so low I barely caught it.

I almost sat up.

I almost said, for what?

Then he laid my hand on the sheet, and stood, and went out, and I heard him stop in the hall.

I heard my nightstand drawer scrape open and shut, and I thought, he's checking the tablets.

I lay there until the sky went grey.

In the morning, I came down in my oldest t-shirt, hair in a knot, and found all four men in my kitchen.

Byron stood at the stove in his reading glasses, flipping pancakes.

Tucker sat at the table, carefully buttering toast.

Abel was reading the paper on his phone, one foot propped on a chair.

Denton was cutting a grapefruit into equal halves and did not look up.

"Morning," Byron said. "Sleep okay?"

"Like the dead," I said.

His spatula stopped for half a second.

Then he went on flipping, and the pancake landed perfectly.

I took the chair across from Denton and watched all four of them be normal.

It was the strangest thing I have ever seen.

Abel asked Tucker if the boat was running.

Tucker said yes.

Denton asked whether I wanted syrup, and his hand held the pitcher, and his eyes met mine for a second and slid off.

The color came up in his neck.

I wanted to put my fork down and say, I know what your fingers did.

I ate my pancake instead.

"Pulse check," Denton said, finally, in his doctor voice, and held out his hand. "Since the dose is new."

I gave him my wrist.

His fingers settled on it, two of them, in the same place as last night.

I felt my pulse jump straight into them.

His eyes lifted to mine.

I looked back, calm, and let it race.

"Eighty-four," he said, very quietly. "A little high."

"I had a dream," I said.

Something moved in his face and was gone.

Behind him, Byron set a small amber bottle beside my plate.

I didn't know it.

The label said my name and a number twice the old one.

"Denton upped it," Byron said. "You've been sleeping light."

He was looking straight at me over the top of his glasses, and I could not read one thing in his face.

"Double dose," he said gently. "So you won't wake up for anything."

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