Counterfactual

11 | chimerical

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHIMERICAL

( — created by unchecked imagination; fantastically visionary or highly improbable. )

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          AS EXPECTED, ROWAN BARELY GETS ANY SLEEP. It's not because Jasper snores—which she doesn't—or because he had too much to drink—which he didn't. Instead, he's still losing sleep over the same reason, being on his toes almost constantly and worrying about what's going to happen next. Installing surveillance cameras inside the apartment would be an expensive, yet good idea, but he doesn't know how he'll explain that to his landlord when it's time to pay for next month's rent.

          He has already paid for this month's because money is one of the very few things he's still responsible for. Considering he writes everything down, not just stuff related to the damn book, you'd expect him to write down the deadline to pay for rent—that's why he's never late with it, with his landlord telling him she wishes the other tenants were as considerate as he is.

          It's one of the few personality-related compliments he has gotten since his arrival. It doesn't bother him nearly as much as he thought it would, with the rest of them revolving around his writing, but, then again, his writing is the reason why he's in Nova Scotia. He didn't get the job thanks to his charming personality—though his competitors seemed to be a lot worse than him, despite him having held back during his interview with Gabriel—so it truly doesn't matter.

          Next to him, Jasper stirs on the bed, with an arm lazily slung around his waist. She sighs softly against the nape of his neck, raising goosebumps all over his skin, especially on the places her hot breath fans across. This is one of the last places where Rowan wants to be, truthfully, with regret washing over him as he replays every moment from the last two hours in his mind, but he can't find the strength to get up and wake her up in the process.

          He's not that insensitive. Jasper might be a terrible person at her core, but, even though he's pretty awful as well, he's not stepping down to her level by keeping her awake throughout the entire night just because he can't fall asleep. Falling asleep isn't even the problem; what bothers him the most is how he simply cannot stay asleep for too long—most of the time, he can't remember his dreams or know if he even dreamed at all. You need to reach a certain degree of relaxation to enter REM sleep, and he doubts he has been hitting it.

          Thinking about it, he really, really wishes he hadn't invited Jasper inside. He wouldn't have minded walking her to her hotel and then return to the apartment—after all, he's still a human being and wouldn't want anything bad to happen to her, especially after Taylor Morris' disappearance—but anything would have been better than this. It's not her fault, obviously, but, God, this shouldn't have happened.

           Huffing, he tries to sit up as slowly as possible, with Jasper's hand falling limply over the mattress with a soft thud when he's far enough. A pang of guilt punctures through his heart when he does it, briefly glancing down at her, as she looks so damn peaceful like this, and it's almost easy to forget about all the horrible things and the toxicity they put each other through.

          They turned a relationship into a pile of nuclear waste. That's not something they can simply get over and no amount of couples counseling sessions would ever make it even the slightest bit better.

          The board is exactly how he left it since the last time he landed eyes on it, twenty-four hours ago. The note he ripped out of it has been smothered into a ball, resting on the floor, and he picks it up to throw it out, almost banging his head against the board itself as he straightens himself. The noise, followed by the curses he mutters under his breath, is what wakes Jasper up.