Chapter 13 Emily
Emily
Dean’s silhouette sagged in the pool of sodium light, leather cut hanging askew, head ducked like a boxer taking his first eight-count. His hand pressed the buzzer again, harder. The sound vibrated the inside of my skull.
I buzzed him up without a word, then clicked on the bathroom light and started the tap running hot.
I found the old blue towel with bleach stains—one I reserved for sick dogs or drunken roommates—and laid it across the edge of the tub.
I put peroxide and a roll of gauze on the toilet lid.
My hands moved through the checklist, efficient, not trembling.
The same hands that, as a girl, had reset a spaniel’s snapped paw with popsicle sticks and vet wrap.
Dean shouldered through my door without knocking.
His face looked worse than the cut—one side already swelling, eye darkening by the minute.
The leather vest was torn under the arm, threads frayed and curling.
His knuckles were meat and gravel. There was blood on his shirt, dark and sticky at the collar.
He didn’t speak. Just let the door shut, then leaned against the wall and stared at the floor. The overhead light sliced a hard shadow across the bridge of his nose, and for a second, I thought he was about to collapse.
I didn’t ask if he was okay. Instead, I nodded toward the bathroom and waited until he shuffled in, boots leaving grit on the tile.
“Sit,” I said, softer than I meant to.
He did, slumping to the edge of the tub, hands loose in his lap.
I knelt in front of him and started cutting away the shreds of his t-shirt, wincing every time he flinched at the pull of fabric.
There was a slice on his left bicep, deep enough that it might scar, but not so deep that I’d need to call in a favor from the clinic vet.
“Tell me if you’re about to pass out,” I said, filling the basin with water and tearing open a pack of sterile gauze.
He almost smiled, but it cracked at the edges. “If I do, just let me bleed out. Less paperwork.”
The phone in his pocket buzzed—once, twice, then a flurry of vibration. I ignored it. He tried to, too, but his jaw clenched every time it started up again. Blood streaked his jeans, but it was old blood—already congealed to a syrupy crust on his knee.
I soaked a washcloth in hot water and pressed it to the worst of the cuts. The heat drew out a grunt, but he didn’t pull away. I cleaned the dirt from his knuckles, picked out the embedded gravel with tweezers from the manicure set, then pressed a butterfly bandage to the tear on his forearm.
The only sound was the running water and, every so often, the click of his dog tags as he shifted. The tags stuck to his chest with a glue of blood and sweat, and when I tried to wipe them clean, he caught my wrist, gentle but absolute.
“Leave those,” he said.
I nodded and let go. He exhaled, slow, like it hurt to take air in.
I finished cleaning the cuts and went to work with the tape. He watched my hands, not meeting my eyes, as if he was memorizing the rhythm of the work. His own hands stayed still, even when I needed to wrap the gauze tight enough to cut off circulation.
The phone started buzzing again. This time, I couldn’t ignore it. “You want to get that?” I asked, voice low.
He shook his head. “It’s just Damron. Or Nitro. They’re probably still at the bar.”
I wiped the last of the blood from his eyebrow, careful not to press on the swelling. “Are you supposed to check in?”
He shrugged, an ugly twist of his shoulder. “I told them I was out for the night.”
I finished the bandage, then sat back on my heels, hands slick with peroxide and the sharp stink of his sweat.
I wanted to ask what happened, who he fought, if he won.
But I knew the answers already, or enough of them to patch together the story.
It would be in the morning police blotter, or the whispers at the dog park.
Instead, I asked, “Did you start it?”
His eyes flicked to mine, blue gone almost black in the bad light. “I finished it,” he said. The words were soft, dangerous.
I nodded. That was good enough.
He let his head drop into his hands, the dog tags clinking as they swung. His breath was rough, but steady. I rinsed my hands in the sink, then wet a second cloth and pressed it to the side of his face, where the swelling was worst.
“You need to ice this,” I said. “Or you’ll look like a science project in the morning.”
He didn’t move. “Might improve my chances at work.”
The phone vibrated again, angry now. He fished it out, checked the screen, then set it face down on the edge of the sink. I caught the name in the preview: DAMRON, ALL CAPS.
“Do you need to go?” I asked, careful to keep my voice flat.
He wiped his good hand over his face, then looked at me for the first time since he walked in. “Not tonight,” he said. “I just want to stay here.”
I didn’t trust myself to answer. Instead, I helped him out of the ruined shirt, then rummaged in my own dresser for a t-shirt that would fit over the tape and bruises.
He shivered when the cool cotton touched his skin, and for a second, I wanted to crawl into his lap and wrap myself around every broken part.
But I didn’t. I kept my distance, sitting on the edge of the tub while he splashed cold water on his face.
The hum of the fridge in the kitchen was a steady white noise, punctuated by the rare distant squeal of a tire on wet asphalt. In the silence, the question I hadn’t asked pressed in on us both.
“Did you get what you wanted?” I asked, voice barely above the noise.
He dried his face on the blue towel, then squeezed it in both hands, wringing it hard. “No,” he said. “But it’s a start.”
We sat like that for a long time. The phone vibrated twice more, then stopped. Dean stared at the towel, the threadbare edge fraying in his grip. His hands were still bleeding a little, but the worst of it had been washed away.
He didn’t explain what happened. I didn’t ask. In the end, it was enough that he came here, instead of anywhere else.
I put a hand on his knee and felt the muscle jump under my palm. “If you need to talk,” I said, “I’m not going anywhere.”
He put his own hand over mine, just for a second, then let it drop.
When he finally stood, he moved slow, careful not to disturb the fresh bandages.
I guided him to the living room, where he collapsed onto the couch, head back and eyes already half-closed.
I pulled a blanket over his legs and turned off the light, leaving only the thin strip of yellow from the hall.
As I walked back to my own room, I heard the faint clink of his dog tags, and for a second, I wondered if he’d ever take them off. I wondered if I wanted him to.
The silence felt bigger than either of us, but it wasn’t empty. It was full of the things we’d chosen not to say.
I slept with the door open that night.
***
Sunlight fractured across the kitchen, slicing the linoleum into crime-scene stripes. I woke to the smell of burnt coffee and the low static of the TV. For a second, I forgot what day it was, how many hours since I’d last blinked in real sleep.
Dean was already up, standing by the window in yesterday’s jeans, hair slicked back with tap water.
The cuts on his knuckles looked angrier in the daylight, blooming red against the faded tattoo on his forearm.
The dog tags rested in the hollow of his throat, glinting each time he sipped from my chipped Humane Society mug.
On the TV, a news anchor gestured at a street I recognized—the shitty bodega by the train tracks, blue-and-red lights strobing across broken pavement. The audio was off, but the headline screamed across the bottom: THREE MEN HOSPITALIZED AFTER LATE-NIGHT brAWL.
Dean didn’t look at me. He just watched the screen, jaw clamped so hard I heard the grind of his teeth.
I made two mugs of coffee, black, no sugar. The pot had been left on, so it poured out thick as tar and twice as bitter. I set one mug on the table, then sidled up beside him, mug in hand, and watched the silent loop of paramedics carting a body on a stretcher.
I let the silence stretch, the way you do when you’re not sure where the limits are.
“They’re not dead,” he said finally, voice low. “But they’ll wish they were.”
“Was it the Sultans?” I asked, though I already knew.
He nodded, never taking his eyes off the TV. “They were running meth out of that place. Middle of the night, half a block from an elementary school.” He looked at me, eyes fierce and bright. “There are lines we don’t cross.”
I let that sit. “And if they cross it, you handle it?”
He set his mug down, just a little too hard. “Some things you can’t talk out of. You have to show them.”
I tried to picture the scene—Dean and whoever else, fists and boots and the crash of flesh on concrete. I tried to imagine the moment when he decided to go from zero to war. I couldn’t do it, not really, not without making him a stranger.
“Does it work?” I asked, quietly.
He looked at me, expression caught between shame and pride. “Most times. If not, at least they know we’ll bleed for what matters.”
I thought of the animals I’d seen, the ferals and the fighters, the ones who only learned by bite and scar. “That’s not how most people live,” I said, more observation than judgment.
He snorted. “Most people don’t have to.”
The TV cut to footage of a hospital entrance and a cop car idling at the curb. The banner read, VICTIMS UNCOOPERATIVE. Dean’s lips twisted, as if he’d heard the words instead of just reading them.
I turned off the TV with the remote, then faced him. “You ever wish it was different?”
He looked at me, really looked, and for a second I saw the fatigue behind the bluster. “Not really,” he said. “If you start wishing, you get soft. You start losing.”