And I should really just stop there, leave it at that. I should probably even be delighted to see him suffering. But it hurts, watching him like this, his fears flooding in over his head. If I were a soldier, I would be the very first to be dismissed from the front lines or killed on the spot for my weakness, because who else would run across the battlefield to their enemy, offering up bandages instead of bullets?

“You know,” I say slowly, “I get nightmares a lot too. Really vivid ones. I don’t think I ever scream out or anything, but that’s because I’m usually frozen inside them—like I can’t move or speak. I can only wait until I wake up. When I was younger, if I had a really bad nightmare, I’d turn on all the lights in my bedroom and drink a giant glass of warm water, and then I would sing to myself under my breath. Not, like, a lullaby. But something really annoying and ridiculous, like an advertising jingle.”

“An advertising jingle?” he repeats with a soft laugh, resting his cheek against his arm.

“The more obnoxious the better,” I confirm, hating how much the sound of his laughter pleases me. “That way, the only thing I can hear is the jingle stuck on loop selling me crunchy chocolate cereal, instead of my own thoughts.”

“I should give it a try sometime, then,” he says.

“You should. Or, if that fails, you can call me,” I say before I can stop myself. God help me. The desire to comfort him is so much stronger than the desire to destroy him now. “And I’ll sing advertising jingles to you until they’re permanently stuck in your head. I have a beautiful singing voice, you know. Very throaty.”

His smile is careful, as if he doesn’t want to take the offer too seriously. “Is that a threat?”

“It’s a promise.” I meet his surprised gaze, hold it, my heart picking up its pace inside my chest like it’s in a hurry to go somewhere. He’s the first to look away, the red flush of his neck visible even in the mellow light.

“I doubt you understand what you’d be signing up for here,” he says quietly. “It takes forever for me to go back to sleep once I’ve woken from a bad dream. A lot of the time, I lie wide awake until morning, just—thinking. Thinking about things I shouldn’t.”

“Like?”

He hesitates. Starts to say something. Stops again before it can get past his lips. “Mostly, the things I regret,” he tells me. “The things I should have done differently, or shouldn’t have said. Terrible mistakes I’ve made. The measures I could have taken to prevent my parents from splitting—”