I sit up with a gasp and bump heads with someone who falls back, swearing. Sean’s sitting on my bed, bare-chested, rubbing his forehead. It’s dark, night outside.

“What? Why…”

“You were having a bad dream,” he says. “I heard you shouting.”

My heart is racing, my back is wet with sweat. “What time is it?” I whisper.

“Just after three.”

I’ve slept. Properly slept, for hours, longer than I’ve slept in weeks. I look down but I’m no longer holding the box of sleeping pills. My fists are clenched tight but empty. I lean over the side of the bed—nothing.

“What are you looking for?”

“I had some sleeping pills, from the doctor. I don’t know what I’ve done with them.” I was holding them when I fell asleep, wasn’t I?

He picks up my hand, still curled tight into a fist. “What were you dreaming about?”

“The house. The woods. Bella. Same things I always dream about.”

He’s stroking my wrist with his thumb and I shiver. I swallow, my throat dry. He’s staring straight ahead. I don’t think he even realizes he’s doing it, but I’m hyperaware he’s on my bed, half-dressed, in the middle of the night and all I keep thinking is I kissed you. It was you I kissed and it feels like I’m sixteen again and I’m tired and awake and hurting and sad and I want…I just want.

He turns to look at me and I almost do it, almost lean in again, kiss him again, but I don’t have to because he leans in this time. It’s the briefest brush of his lips and then he’s gone, up and out of the room and I’m left again wondering if he and the kiss were a dream.

I get up to turn the light on and look for the sleeping pills. I won’t take one tonight, it’s too late, but maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow it’ll be time to start getting better. I pull the quilt aside but they’re not there. Frowning, I crouch to check under the bed again. Then I open the drawer of the bedside cabinet in case I put them away without remembering. But they’re not anywhere—not on the windowsill or in my bag or any of the drawers or wardrobe. There are still red lines on my palm, the imprint of the edges of the box like a fossil on my skin, so I know I was still clutching the box when I went to sleep.