Page 111 of Carrick
I didn’t remember falling asleep. I barely remembered lying down. There had been silence. Breathing. His hand in mine.
And then… nothing.
But now the world was quiet in a different way—thick and dark and still. The kind of quiet that only exists at three a.m., when even the nightmares haven’t quite finished brewing.
I blinked slowly, and let my eyes adjust to the low amber glow spilling from the lantern on the nightstand. Carrick was awake.
He sat at the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, head bowed slightly, like he was listening to something I couldn’t hear. The tension in his shoulders had returned, the weight he always carried settling like armor across his back again.
I watched him for a moment, silently. Felt the heaviness between us—not new, but unspoken.
“Can’t sleep?” I asked softly.
He didn’t turn around. But I saw the tilt of his head. The faint breath of relief that I was still here. Still real.
“Didn’t want to wake you.”
I pushed myself up onto my elbow, dragging the blanket with me.
“You didn’t.”
Carrick turned then, his silhouette edged in gold by the lantern. His expression was unreadable, but not cold. Just… guarded.
Always guarded.
“I’ve never slept in someone’s bed this many nights without having sex with them,” I said, the words slipping out without permission.
He blinked once, and then—just barely—smiled. A tired, crooked thing. “You want a medal?”
I shrugged. “I’m just saying. It’s new for me.”
His gaze drifted over me, softening. “Yeah. Me too.”
We were quiet again.
Then I said it—because the night invited honesty, and because something in me needed to know more.
“Tell me something I don’t know about you.”
He hesitated for a long moment, then shifted to face me fully, his arms resting on his thighs, gaze distant.
“My parents didn’t want me.”
He said it like a fact. Not a wound. Not a confession.
But I heard the fracture under the words, anyway.
He didn’t look at me as he said it. He looked through the wall, past the drywall, like he was seeing a place I couldn’t follow.
“They didn’t say it outright. At least not when I was little. But you know. You feel it. The way their hands never linger too long. The way their eyes slide off you. You notice when you’re the obligation in the room instead of the center of it.”
My throat tightened.
Carrick ran a hand over his jaw. “It got clearer as I got older. They didn’t hide it anymore. Every teacher call, every missed parent conference, every time they forgot picture day or birthday cupcakes or whatever normal parents do… it was just proof.”
I sat up fully now, legs curled beneath me, the blanket pulled tight around my shoulders. I didn’t speak. I didn’t dare interrupt him.
“I was always too much. Or not enough. Never the right kind of boy. Too loud. Too quiet. Too aggressive. Too shut down. I had trouble in school—couldn’t sit still, couldn’t focus on the stuff that didn’t challenge me. They said I had potential, but it came with an asterisk.”
