I adopted Arthur.
Or rather, Arthur adopted me.
He owned his house. I moved in after giving up my rental.
Arthur cleaned out the master bedroom for me, taking a duvet and heading to the second bedroom himself.
I tugged on the edge of his shirt, asking, “Don’t you want to share a bed with me?‘
As soon as the words left my mouth, I regretted them.
Damian didn’t like me, so even when we lived together, we always slept separately
He was in the master bedroom, I was in the second.
Arthur was so good to me, but I still felt instinctively anxious. I was afraid he didn’t like me either.
But then I reconsidered, feeling
ng as if I was taking all his kindness for granted.
ep with me?”
Arthur’s face instantly flushed deep red. His bear ears twitched, and he asked, “Do you want to sleep
irt tights
I clutched his shirt tighter and nodded.
That night, he lay beside me, extending his arm for me to rest my head on, but his body was as stiff as a corpse.
Listening to his increasingly heavy breathing, I drifted in and out of sleep.
A series of slides flashed through my mind.
The first was my parents leaning over a cradle, my dad gently rocking it, my mom softly humming a lullaby.
In that cradle
Chloe.
Because I never had my own cradle, and I never heard a lullaby.
The second was Damian’s disdainful face. He stood at the bathroom door, impatiently asking, “How much longer will you be?”
I looked down. I was washing my blood–stained underwear.
I’d taken too long, inconveniencing Damian’s use of the bathroom.
