Days at the Barns felt long. Drowsy. Ronan avoided sleeping, which only made the days longer. He wasn’t alone, but Chainsaw and Opal had their own odd habits, and he didn’t want them hovering anyway. He tinkered with ideas for waking the cows, he tried to imagine a perfected Cabeswater, he glanced at the photos Gansey texted, pictures of him and Blue and Henry in sunny places that opposed Ronan’s mood.
The only calls he answered came from Adam. They came almost nightly, on a wave of relief at hearing Adam’s voice and knowing the dreams weren’t real. Adam wasn’t lying injured somewhere. Adam still loved him.
Not that they said it. But Adam’s tone told Ronan what he needed to know and somehow both satisfied his cravings and left him hungrier than before.
Adam sensed this. One night he said, mournfully, “Sometimes I think I’ll never be enough for you.”
To which Ronan replied, “You’re the only thing I can never get enough of.”
A long silence followed as Adam puzzled out the logic. “That’s the same thing,” he finally deduced.
“It’s not.”
“It is. What happens when there’s none of me left?”
“That will never happen,” Ronan told him. “I will never let that happen.”
Adam accepted this without comment; he knew Ronan never lied.
Alas, Ronan did sometimes make promises he couldn’t keep.
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