THE VISION IS A PLACE | ✓ {complete}

Chapter 50 : the shed

     I close my eyes for not even a minute before Heath knocks on the door. "Just checking in," he says.

I put my finger to my lips so he'll talk lower.

"How is he?" he asks, in a whisper.

"Just tired, I think."

"Where's Addison?" he asks, seeing our bed empty, expecting he'd be in here.

"Outside."

"...Are you guys fighting?" he asks.

I shake my head. If I cared what he thought right now, I'd try to put his concern to bed, but I don't see the point. What does it matter if he thinks we're fighting or not? I don't owe him anything. I don't have to explain myself. Not to him. Not anymore.

"Are you doing okay?" he asks, taking Addison out of it.

I nod, even though I know my cheeks are shining in the hallway light.

"Do you want to go talk somewhere?"

Imagine I wanted that right now... "No."

He leans against the door frame and looks over Noah for a few long seconds, nibbling at his thumb nail, deep in thought as if I weren't here.

I feel so protective over Noah right now that I don't even want Heath looking at him. I just want him to leave. But at the same time, I can't pretend that I don't see the compassion in his eyes. Noah's words haunt me. He loves us so much he wants to keep us forever...

"You'll be okay here on your own?" he asks me, eventually.

"Yeah, we're fine."

"He doesn't need another cool pack or anything?"

My feet are close enough to Noah's that I can feel it. "No, it's still cold."

He looks like he wants to say something else. It's so hard to not just blurt out everything I'm thinking. I feel like if I say more than a few words at once, the rest are going to tumble out behind them before I can stop myself.

"Okay," he says, finally standing back up straight. "Try to get some sleep."

As soon as he leaves, it's like a dam breaks, and another wave of adrenaline finds me, like a drug I don't want to be taking. I tell myself to calm down. I hope it won't feel like this every time he talks to me from now on; like I'm walking on thin ice and when it's over like I've dodged a bullet.

There's no way I'll be able to fall asleep right now, so as soon as I hear his own bedroom door close, I get up.

With Aurora's bed sheets warped around my shoulders, I make my way to the woodshed. A small generator is humming, powering a single construction spotlight shining on Addison and his work station.

He glances up at the sound of my footsteps, but continues with what he's doing. He's building Noah a set of crutches. I don't know how to help, so I sit on the wide tree stump, that we use to chop wood, and I watch.

I play with the sawdust on the ground using my feet, making mounds and then flattening them again to start over. He looks up every once in awhile, just to see if I'm still here.

Forty minutes pass, and the basic frame of the crutches are finished.

"You're not that much shorter than Noah," he says. These are his first words to me since I've been out here, but it doesn't feel like it. There was no real seal to be broken. "Can you..." He holds them out for me to try.