The ceiling had forty-two tiles.
Mara knew this without counting them. She'd counted them enough times in the weeks since she'd moved into this room that the number lived in her bones now, like a reflex.
But she counted them again anyway, because it was something to do that kept her mind from thinking about the warm pressure of the arm resting over her waist.
She lay very still.
Nico was asleep on his back beside her, with one arm across her like he'd reached for her in the night without deciding to. He was shirtless, his tattoos on full display across his chest and arms.
She let herself look for exactly thirty seconds.
Then she looked back at the ceiling.
The night came back in fragments, the way things did when your brain had been chemically hijacked and was only now returning the pieces in whatever order it found them: the corridor at the Marino estate, the sting of the needle, the hotel room ceiling, Nico's voice saying her name… everything was blurred.
