COLE
I wasn’t asleep.
I hadn’t been asleep since I got home. I’d walked from Nova’s building to mine, another fourteen blocks north, and by the time I let myself into the apartment the cold had settled into my shoulder and turned the dull ache into something sharper. I’d iced it. Taken two ibuprofen. Stood in the shower until the water ran cold. Then I’d gotten into bed and stared at the ceiling.
The ceiling had no answers. It never did.
I kept thinking about the walk. Not the conversation about Victor. Not the thing she’d said about how Victor watched people. The other part. The part where she’d told me she didn’t miss places and I’d asked what she was built to miss and she’d said *I’ll let you know when I figure it out* in a voice that was so steady and so empty it made my chest hurt
