25. PAUL

He didn’t know that I was awake. In the dark, I watched Jack read the message on his phone. I saw how his eyes glowed and narrowed briefly, and then it appeared as if he read the message a second time.

Tension danced across his face, his features illuminated by the screen’s glare, a glow of white in the darkness. I couldn’t help but wonder what the message contained. What words had the power to make him look so disturbed?

He turned the phone screen off, and the room flashed back to black.

“Is everything okay?” I asked.

He turned to look at me.

“You’re awake?”

“Yeah.” I paused. “Well, I just woke up. I guess the light from your phone…”

He was silent for a moment.

“Yeah, everything’s fine,” he said.

“You sure? Did you get a message that disturbed you?”

His eyes focused on me directly in the dark. I saw the whites of his eyes as they flicked toward me, some hint of suspicion or self-protection.

“It was nothing,” he murmured.

I decided not to push it. Instead, I lay there in the quiet of the night, the soft cadence of Jack’s breathing around me. What was he hiding from me? I felt there was something.

Having put his phone aside, he opened his arms to me. I moved back into the crook of his body, and gradually, he drifted off to sleep, his embrace growing looser around me. Now, it was me who lay awake, cradled against the warmth of his skin, half feeling safe and half uncertain.