She’d known, though. She’d grabbed his hand at the right moment. You’re shaking. She’d whispered it, leaving him a shred of dignity in front of her father.

He thought of those bookcases, charred almost beyond recognition. His whole house was unstable, but those damned bookcases were what his brain wanted to latch on to. His mother was long dead. Bookcases didn’t matter. Nothing in that house mattered.

He locked the phone and set it on the concrete.

Dirt shifted under his heels, feeding him strength, but not much else. His element wasn’t one for lightening a mood. He hunched over and rubbed his arms. Damn, it was cold.

He couldn’t stop fidgeting.

He picked his phone back up. Put it down, then picked it up again and woke the screen to check the time. He couldn’t call his insurance agent for another fifteen minutes. He could hold it together that long.

You can do anything for fifteen minutes.

His father’s words, often repeated. Michael first remembered hearing them when he was nine and didn’t want to do assigned reading for school. His father had set a timer on the stove and shoved the book in his hands.

His father had been right. He could read for fifteen minutes. He could do a lot of things for fifteen minutes.

Those words had haunted him after his parents’ deaths. He’d broken time into chunks to get through every day. Fifteen minutes for breakfast. Fifteen minutes to get his brothers to school. Fifteen minutes to travel between landscaping jobs. He could cook a frozen dinner in fifteen minutes.

Lights out in fifteen minutes.

His own words, when his brothers were younger, when he’d had no idea how to be a parent because he wasn’t done being a kid. The minutes after they were asleep were both the best and the worst. The best because the house was finally quiet, and he was alone with his thoughts.

The worst for the exact same reason.

You can do anything for fifteen minutes.

He hadn’t been able to save his parents. And the fire had killed them a lot quicker than that.

The door behind him slid open, and he inwardly sighed, wondering who else couldn’t sleep, and how quickly their stress would double the weight of his own.

His money was on Chris, but the footsteps on the concrete were light and unfamiliar. Michael turned his head to find himself face-to-face with a travel mug, steam escaping through the hole in the lid.

“Hot drink?” said Adam, his voice quiet.

“Sure.” Michael cleared his throat and forced his frozen fingers to wrap around the mug. He barely knew Adam, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted this distraction. He turned his gaze back to the horizon. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

He expected Adam to retreat into his apartment, but a blanket dropped over his shoulders, a weight of rich brown fabric that felt velvet soft to the touch.

Michael froze, unsure how to react.

Adam gave his shoulder a quick squeeze before moving away. “You were making me cold just looking at you.” He sat cross-legged against the beam at the corner of the patio. His movements were unhurried and graceful, so different from Michael’s brothers. He offered half a smile. “Nick ignores my chairs, too.”

Michael glanced over his shoulder at the patio chairs. Saying he felt better with his feet in the grass felt like admitting vulnerability, so he kept his mouth shut.

Silence swirled between them, and though it wasn’t strained, Michael wondered if he was being rude. “Thanks for letting us crash here for a little while.”

“Stay as long as you need to.”

Michael snorted. “You say that now.”

“A houseful of Merricks isn’t exactly a problem.”

Michael studied him, trying to determine whether he was teasing, and what the right reaction should be.

Adam’s expression went serious. “You’d do the same for me.”

Michael looked back at the drainage pond. “You don’t know that.”

“I know Nick. So yes, I do know that.”

Michael wasn’t sure what to say to that, so he fidgeted with the lid of the mug.

After a long stretch of silence, Adam said, “Your brothers are asleep. You should get some rest, too.”

“Yeah, right.” Like he could sleep now, when he didn’t know if they had a chance of surviving the next twelve hours. He took a sip from the mug, just to spare himself the need to say anything else.

To his surprise, warm chocolate and cinnamon swirled across his tongue, instead of the coffee he’d been expecting. It was good, and helped warm him from the inside. He took another sip.

Adam pulled his hands into the sleeves of his pullover and blew on his exposed fingertips. “Do you want another blanket?”

“No.” Michael didn’t mean to sound short, but the word ended with an edge. He added, “You don’t have to sit out here. Go back inside if you’re cold.”

Adam didn’t move. “I’m all right.” He paused. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”

“Yes.”

Again, the word was too short, too harsh. But Michael couldn’t wrap his brain around social niceties, and he sure as hell couldn’t face the stress of a conversation. Not because Adam’s presence bothered him. Because Adam was a reminder that others could be caught in the crossfire if he made the wrong decisions. A reminder that Michael couldn’t handle everything on his own, that once again they were dependent on the charity of others.

Tension crawled across his shoulders, digging in for a nice long ride. He wished they could run. He wanted to wake his brothers and pack them into the truck, then drive somewhere he wouldn’t have to worry about anyone else.