I'm Sera. I have slept in bad rooms my whole life.
This one had a bed the size of a boat, and it scared me more than any of them.
The bed was white and soft, and it looked like a trap.
Soft things were always where the bad stuff started.
So I dragged the quilt to the floor by the window and lay down on the carpet.
The floor I knew. The floor never pretended to be kind.
My body still hurt from the courthouse, from the car, from a whole life of being careful.
I kept my shoes by my head in case I had to run.
I had almost fallen asleep when the light came under the door.
Dorian stood in the doorway with his collar open and his sleeves rolled up.
Dorian: What the fuck are you doing on the floor.
I sat up too fast and my heart went wild.
My hands found my notebook before my brain did.
I wrote the only true thing I could think of.
The bed is too soft. The floor is better.
He read it, and his jaw moved like he was chewing on it.
Then he looked at the bed, and then at me, and something in his face changed.
Dorian: Get up. Get in the bed.
He said it low, not loud, and it still filled the whole room.
I didn't move. I couldn't.
He crouched down in front of me, close enough to smell. Soap and cold air.
His face was hard, and he looked at me like a problem he couldn't put down.
Dorian: I'm not asking twice. Get up, or I'll put you in it myself.
His hand came up and I flinched, and he stopped it in the air.
He stood and pulled the blanket down to the foot of the bed.
His knuckles brushed the sheet, and I watched them like they were dangerous.
I got up. My legs were shaking and I hated that he could see it.
I climbed into the bed, and the mattress sank under me, and I went still.
I opened the notebook again.
Why do you care where I sleep?
He read it standing over me, and for a second he didn't say anything.
Dorian: Because you're my wife. And I'm not having the staff talk about a woman sleeping on the floor like a dog.
Dorian: That's all it is. Don't make it into something.
He turned off the light and stood in the dark with his hand on the door.
Dorian: Nobody comes in here at night. Not me. Not anybody.
Then he left, and he left the door open an inch.
I don't know why that was the thing that made my eyes sting.
The bed was still a trap. But it was a trap with a door open in it.
I lay there holding my notebook and listened to the building breathe, waiting to see if he would come back.