I shrugged, not really liking praise. I wasn’t doing it to help out, but because I really liked how I felt when I was so close to Nova. When she’d been asleep beside me earlier, I felt like nothing was wrong. I actually felt good, when good was the one thing I’d rarely felt my whole life. Only Mom could make me feel like that, but this was a different kind of good.

This was…more.

4

Ryan

Heart pounding, I jerked upright in bed. Sweat was dripping off my body, and I kicked off my covers in frustration as my fear continued to make me shake.

After the nap I’d taken with Nova earlier, with no nightmares to wake me, I had thought—hoped—that I wouldn’t have them when I went to bed. A glance at the clock told me I’d only been asleep an hour, and already I’d been chased by the monster in my dreams.

Pulling my knees up, I pressed my damp forehead to them and tried not to cry. Crying wouldn’t help, and it only made me feel like a baby. When I was younger, I would scream out and wake the entire house. And then Mom came to live with us. The dreams hadn’t been as bad since then, but that didn’t make them stop. I might not scream out in terror, but the very real fear that I could taste on my tongue wasn’t much better.

The sound of my door being pushed open had my head snapping up. There were a few night-lights in the outlets around my room to give it a soft glow, which made it easy to see the tiny shadow tiptoeing toward my bed. The sight of Nova in her kitten pajamas, her long blond hair hanging around her face like a halo, and a stuffed bunny in one arm, had that sick, terror-filled feeling in my stomach disappearing.

I didn’t know why, but I’d left my door slightly ajar when I’d gone to bed earlier. Nova had been given the room across from mine, a toddler bed having been set up the week before in anticipation of her and her family’s arrival. Knowing she was just across the hall, I’d wanted to be able to hear her if she happened to get scared in the middle of the night. As big as my house was, I didn’t want her to wake up and not know where anyone was and be afraid, so I’d shown her several times that I was close.

As she got closer to my bed, she stopped. “What’s wrong?” she whispered, seeing that I was sitting up.

“Nothing.” It wasn’t a lie. Now that she was here, there really was nothing wrong. My heart rate was back to normal, not making my chest shake from how hard it was pounding, and the cold sweat that had been dripping off my body only moments before was quickly drying on my skin. “Couldn’t you sleep?”

She tightened her hold on her bunny. “We don’t like that big room. I like it better in here. With you.”