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Sleep eludes him. It has for days. It teases at the edges of his mind like a storm that refuses to break, clouds heavy with unshed rain. He has tossed and turned for hours with no success. His books and music have failed him, and the longer he stays in his bed, the worse it will get. He shoves back the covers, thinking that perhaps he will have better luck with the couch and a documentary. He pads down the hallway in his bare feet, making his way silently past her closed door. He slips through the doorway to the living room and stops when he realizes she is already there.
Drowned in sleep, she is stretched on the couch with a book on the floor and a blanket curling around her hips. She wears what she did when he saw her hours ago, a tank top beneath a hoodie. The jacket has slipped down her arm, and he is transfixed at the sight of her shoulder in the moonlight. He stands helpless in the darkness, pinned like a butterfly by the line of her jaw, the sweep of her brow, the pale curve of her fingers against dark fabric, and he has never wanted anything as much as he wants this.
It would be easy, he knows. A whisper here. A touch there. The work of minutes or seconds or hours, it does not matter, and then it will be salty skin and twining limbs and she will think it her idea. He has done it before, in another place. Another time. Another life, dead and buried until this moment.
She shifts, settling further into her pillow, and he knows now that he cannot touch her. He cannot move. He cannot carry her to her room so that he can sleep at last. He cannot, because he knows what will happen. She will wake. She will speak his name, and with her skin beneath his fingers and her smooth white bed stretching before him, he will come undone. Perfection sweet as honey and a betrayal more insidious, more vile than any she has ever known. He cannot. He will not.
He flees from her like a wild thing, bolting for the safety of his room. He yanks at the neck of his shirt, shedding clothing like a serpent’s skin and pushing open the bathroom door. He fumbles for the taps, turning them as cold as they will go as he steps into the shower. Standing under the freezing spray, he shivers with rage or desire or loathing and there is no difference. He presses his hands to the frigid walls around him, head bowed and with a plea on his lips, a prayer to the only thing he has ever truly worshipped. The water sluices across his face as he whispers the two words over and over, the ones he swore long ago that she would never have to hear from him again.
Forgive me.