24. Chapter 24
“Istill can’t believe that guy walked away from that fire unscathed,” Monty shouted over to me from his station.
“I know, right?!” I yelled back.
I had just filed my story about a house fire and was packing up my things to leave when Monty approached my desk, zipping up his fleece and slinging his camera over his shoulder. “You ready, kid?” he asked. Even then Monty looked out for me. In those earlier days, he never left before me if it was dark outside.
“You know I have a key, right?” I said as I stood up and pulled my jacket on, then grabbed my purse. “I can lock up when I leave.”
“Lyzbeth, this city is a cesspool. I don’t care if your car is parked on the sidewalk right outside the door, it’s not safe.”
I digressed as we made our way to the door, exited, and he locked up behind us. We got to my car first. “See you tomorrow,” I said as I got in and started the engine. As I navigated the side streets back to my apartment, my phone started ringing. It was a number that wasn’t saved into my phone.
I pulled into a gas station and answered, “Hello?”
“Lyzbeth?” It was a female voice. Familiar, but I couldn’t quite place it.
“Yes. Who is this?”
“Jenny.”
“Oh.” Oh. “Um, hi. What’s …”
“Look, I’m sorry but I just know you’re the only person who can help him through this, and it’s just awful, and I don’t know how to handle it—”
“Wait, hold up.” I shook my head even though she couldn’t see me do it. “What are you talking about? What happened?”
I heard her let out a shaky breath. “Monica died. Knox’s mom.”
I gasped. Clasping my free hand to my mouth, I let out a mumbled, “No!” I could hear Jenny lightly sobbing on the other end of the line.
“What happened?” I managed to get past my shock. I wasn’t even crying. It couldn’t be real.
“They aren’t sure yet,” Jenny said. “They think it was a brain aneurysm. She just collapsed at work.”
“When did this happen?”
“A few hours ago.”
“Where is Knox? Bram? Clyde?” Tears started running down my face.
“They are still at the hospital. Monica is … she’s in the morgue. Bram is absolutely inconsolable, out of his mind about it. Clyde isn’t much better. Emily is trying to help but, it’s bad, Lyzbeth.”
“What about Knox?”
Another sniffle. “He’s just, he’s blank. You know? Like he’s removed or something.”
Yeah … I know …
“I got your number out of his contacts and came out to the parking lot to call you. When I left, Emily was trying to get them all to drink some water. They are all just …” She sighed. “It’s terrible. I can’t go back in there.”
“OK. OK. Which hospital?” I asked, putting the car back into drive and pulling out of the lot.
The hallways of the hospital were long, wide, and bare. Just an endless expanse of cream-colored walls that were almost yellow under the awful glow of fluorescent lighting, which gave off a low hum. The soles of my flats squeaked with each step and echoed down the corridors as I turned this way and that, trying to find Knox and his family.
His family sans one.
The man at the security desk gave me a visitor’s pass I had to stick on my jacket, and gave me piss-poor directions to the morgue which, of course, was in the basement—where there was no activity or, well, signs of life.
I knew I was getting closer to them. I could feel it.
I got to a room at the end of the hall I knew they would be in, and my steps slowed. My heart beat erratically in my chest, my breaths came hard.
I took a deep, ragged breath as I approached the open doorway and glanced inside and took in the scene. It was a white, stale, lifeless room that contained three black couches and a few single chairs. One end table was tucked into the corner with a fake, pathetic plant. On the couch to the side was Bram, slumped and crumpled into Emily’s arms, who rubbed his back that shook with his loud sobs under his Mitchell Sons hoodie. His fists clenched her coat as he mewled and moaned unintelligible words.
Clyde sat on the center couch, slumped over with his elbows on his knees, head in his hands, fingers pulled through his hair as his back slowly rose and fell with steady breaths that I could hear him pulling in and pushing out. Deliberately, consciously, with effort.
Beside him was Knox, also in a Mitchell Sons hoodie, a hand on his dad’s flannel-covered back, his head bent down toward Clyde’s, encouraging him to take deep breaths. “That’s good, Dad. That’s really good,” he said.
And then, because he could feel me as much as I could feel him, Knox’s shoulders gave way just the slightest before he pulled his head, and then his eyes up to meet mine while I shuffled awkwardly through the doorway.
His eyes were red, his face pale, his expression blank. He wasn’t crying, but for the briefest millisecond I saw the wall crack, before he blinked away the sadness and turned back to his dad.
It wasn’t a dismissal. It wasn’t meant to offend me, and it didn’t. It was him trying to keep his shit together for his family because that was Knox. A rock. So, while everything in my body pulled me toward him, instead, I slowly crept around to the other side of Clyde and sank down onto the fake leather couch cushion beside him, and I gently placed a hand on his knee.
Before looking up at me, Clyde placed his big, tear-soaked hand over mine and squeezed so hard I thought he might break it. Then he slowly turned his face over and up toward mine. His eyes were bloodshot. Angry capillaries webbed throughout the white, while his pupils were blown wide. Snot dripped out of his nose and down his lips, which were swollen, and I wondered if he had popped blood vessels just under his eyes.
We shared a silent moment as we locked eyes. We said nothing. With his other hand he clasped my small palm between his large ones, and I placed my other hand on top, so our hands were just one big heap. He brought them to his chest, pulling me closer to him.
“My baby,” he said through broken, beaten breaths. “My love, my life, my light … is gone.” It was the most mournful, downright saddest thing I had ever heard.
I don’t know when they started, but the tears were dripping down my face and falling off my chin and onto my jacket as I simply nodded at Clyde.
“Yeah, she is,” was all I could muster. And then he curled over our clasped hands and sobbed some more.
I snuck a glance over Clyde’s back at Knox, who was staring straight at me, red eyes rimmed with unshed tears. “Thank you,” he mouthed.
“I’m so sorry,” I mouthed back.
Knox cleared his throat and said, low, “We’re just waiting for the coroner to finish up. Then we can see her,” he said, breaking up at the end.
It wasn’t a moment later when an older gentleman wearing a white robe covering blue scrubs and black sneakers appeared in the doorway. He had his hands clasped in front of him and his head bowed, revealing a bald spot on the back. “The Mitchell family?” he asked in a respectful tone. Bram shot up at the sound, Clyde simply looked at the man, and Knox was the one to answer. “Yes.”
“Your loved one is ready for viewing, if you would like to see her,” he said, looking at each one of us, landing on Clyde. “And I am terribly sorry for your loss.”
Clyde cleared his throat, then, hands on his knees, pushed himself up shakily. Knox rose right along with him, an arm on his dad’s back, making sure he was steady. I rose also. As soon as Bram was beside us, Knox nodded with his chin, indicating for Bram to help Clyde, and he did, placing an arm on his elbow and steering him toward the door.
“Can we touch her?” Bram asked, sounding stuffed up, beaten, like he had swallowed razors.
“Yes.” The coroner nodded. “Take as long as you need.”
As Bram led his dad to follow the coroner out of the waiting room, he reached back and grabbed Emily’s hand and pulled her along.
When Knox didn’t make a move forward, Clyde stopped and looked over his shoulder at him. “Son?”
Knox just shook his head, arms at his sides, as he stood next to me.
“What the hell, Knox,” Bram said in disbelief.
Knox cleared his throat. “I can’t,” he said in a voice I had never heard before. “I just can’t. I don’t want to see her like that.”
Looking up, he locked eyes with his dad. “You sure, son?” Clyde asked.
Knox nodded.
“She wanted to be cremated. You may not get another chance.”
He nodded again.
Clyde looked at his youngest son with sadness, pride, love … and so much more. “OK, then.”
They exited the room.
Standing there next to Knox, surrounded by the buzz of the yellow lighting, I watched him finally break. Free from the responsibility to hold it all together for his dad and brother, and—hopefully—in the comfort of my presence, I watched his mother’s death blow a hole right through him.
First it was his lips that started to tremble, his Adam’s apple bobbed as he failed to swallow down emotion. Then wetness spilled over his eyes, his forehead scrunched, and he rapidly started trying to pull air into his lungs. I reached out for him but before I could even do so he sank to his knees and buried his face in my torso, wrapping his arms around me so tightly that my body shook with his cries, moans and shrieks.
I leaned down as far as I could over him, awkwardly embracing the back of his head, rubbing my hands down his back and sides, and then I fell to my own knees and cradled him the best I could. We both cried. For what felt like hours, we both heaved and gasped, then steadied ourselves, then started up again.
We didn’t say anything to one another. There was nothing to be said. No words that could comfort, no questions that needed to be asked.
Finally, exhausted, sitting on the floor, backs resting against the couch, we were hand-in-hand when Emily came back in, blowing her nose into a tissue. “They’re just finishing up in there,” she said, not even flinching at us sitting on the floor. “Your dad has some paperwork to sign, and then we can go.”
I started to pull away, only to reposition myself, but Knox tightened his grip on my hand. “I’m coming back to the house with you,” I rushed out. “I’m going to stay there tonight with you.” I knew going back to the house would be another blow, and he needed me there.
Knox nodded. “I’m sorry, it’s just for toni—”
I placed my hand over his mouth and looked straight into his eyes. “I’m not going anywhere.”
The worst part about building a life with someone is having to experience that life in their absence. Clyde and Monica built a beautiful home together, a glorious life full of tradition and moments and memories, and every square inch of the house was filled with them.
And being there was torture.
There wasn’t a place you could go in the house or on the property that you weren’t reminded of Knox’s beautiful mother. From the kitchen that no longer smelled of sweet or salty home-cooked meals, to the wilted potted plants outside that needed to be watered, to the closets that still housed her clothing, coats and shoes.
Her hairbrush lay untouched on the bathroom vanity, her toothbrush in the holder. I think it was even her towel hanging behind the door.
After coming home from the hospital, Clyde began sleeping in the spare room. He said he couldn’t be in their bed or their bedroom without Monica. And in the days and weeks after her passing, he sank farther and farther into the depths of depression. He stopped crying because, I think, he had no more tears to shed. But then, even worse, he just became devoid. Sometimes I would pass by the open doorway to the spare room and see him sitting on the edge of the unmade bed, staring blankly at the wall.
I had slept every night there with Knox since her death. It wasn’t out of pity or obligation; it was because that was where I belonged.
Bram stopped over almost every day to drop off food Emily had made or to simply check in, but he never stayed long. He didn’t say it, but I knew he didn’t like being there anymore.
So, Knox and I helped Clyde through it the best we could. In the beginning, we pretty much force-fed him, and even bathed him.
There were times I helped Knox walk his dad to the bathroom, undress him until he was just in his briefs, then help him step over the tub and under the spray of the shower. Knox and I both got wet as I scrubbed shampoo into his hair, and Knox used a cloth to wash Clyde’s body.
I even shaved Clyde’s face in the bathroom a few times, him sitting on the closed toilet seat as I tried not to nick his skin as I ran the razor along his jaw and rinsed it in the sink. We would sometimes make eye contact, but I never felt the need to say anything. He might reach out and give my hand a squeeze. And I would squeeze back and smile at him, but that was all. I hoped that was enough for him to know I loved him, and I believed he was strong enough to survive this.
But that in itself was a joke because what did I know of love? What did I know about being a partner? Of building a life with someone and having to show up, and stand up every day?
Because when the going got tough, I ran away.
The three of us sat at the table for meals, even if it was takeout, just for some normalcy. And also, maybe even to force all of us to face the fact that Monica’s chair would forever be empty.
We dragged Clyde to the grocery store, the library, or just out for walks to keep him moving. Knox even started dragging him to work, and eventually he started going through the motions without our prompts. But he wasn’t the same.
Who knew if he would ever be the same?
Knox never broke down again after we left the hospital. He cried at the funeral, but even that was just a few tears.
Since his dad was in the spare room, and the other room was an office, Knox and I were sleeping on the pullout couch in the living room, which had permanently been in bed-form since we came back from the hospital.
That first night I let him pull me close. I let him wrap his limbs around me. I cradled him—his face in my neck, his head in my lap—whatever he needed. However I could attempt to help keep him together, I was happy to do it.
And despite our closeness—the accidental grazing of his hand on my breast as we adjusted against the metal bars jabbing into our backs, or the unintentional press of my ass into his groin as we rolled over for the umpteenth time in one night to try to find comfort—we never had any intentions of sex.
Until the night things changed.
One night, a few weeks after Monica’s passing, I had just turned off the TV and reached over to place the remote on the coffee table next to me as I tried to sink into a spot on the sofa sleeper that didn’t have a bony metal rib jabbing into me, when Knox came down the hallway, having just finished up in the bathroom. He stood at the side of the sofa bed and watched as I writhed and wiggled, and squirmed and swore as I tried to get into position, putting a pillow behind my back, then angrily pulling it out and tossing it aside, throwing my hair askew and blowing it out of my face in a huff.
Knox chuckled, and I turned sharply at the sound, in shock. I hadn’t heard him laugh in a long time. It was a lovely sound.
“You know,” I said, leaning up on an elbow. “I would normally be pissed that you find my discomfort so amusing, but since you’re still grieving, I’ll give you a pass.”
Crossing his arms over his chest, Knox looked down at me, a sad smile playing across his lips. “I wasn’t laughing at you.”
I quirked a brow at him. “No? Sure sounded like it.”
He shook his head, a familiar look lighting up his dark stare. “I was thinking that I adore you, and that you’re the most beautiful woman I know.” My breath caught at his words. “I was thinking a better man would tell you to go home and sleep in a real bed, so you don’t have to suffer here with me on a freaking torture device in a sad house.”
I sat up fully.
“I was thinking I should feel bad for wanting you right now. But I don’t.” He kneeled on the bed, and in one crawl was perched next to me, a hand resting on the mattress beside my hip, the other coming up to cup my face. I leaned into it.
“Knox,” I breathed.
Looking me square in the eyes, Knox said, simply, “I don’t want to be sad anymore.”
I was the one who leaned in and closed the distance between our mouths.
Slowly, gently, painstakingly, we caressed our lips and tongues against one another’s, nibbling, gnawing, getting reacquainted with each other’s taste. Knox guided me down onto my back as he lay over me, his hand sliding from my face up into my hair, then back down my cheek to my neck, over my collar bone and toward my breast.
I reached my hand up to cup his jaw as he continued pulling from my lips, and it glided into his hair as he moved to suckle my neck and down my chest.
Reaching over his shoulders I began pulling his shirt up his back, and he broke away from me to sit up and let me pull it off, tossing it to the side. Looking to reciprocate, Knox started pulling at the hem of the Mitchell Sons T-shirt I had been sleeping in, but as I sat up to let him, my spine rolled over a metal bar, and I cursed.
“Shit!” Knox echoed me. “Here, try this.” He grabbed my hips and softly pulled me down a little further. Then he came back at me.
Deciding to leave my shirt on—which was probably better, anyway, in case Clyde came out and found us, in which case I would have to just die—Knox kissed my stomach as he circled his hands around my hips and ass. He slowly curled his fingers around the waistband of my sleep shorts and my underwear and tugged them down my thighs.
He attempted to kneel so he could pull them all the way down my legs, and I heard a hiss go through his teeth and he tumbled forward half on top of me. “Fucking metal sticking into my kneecap,” he seethed.
I laughed.
“Oh, you think that’s funny,” Knox feigned insult, then jumped up and stood at the end of the sofa bed and aggressively pulled my bottoms all the way off and tossed them aside. He slid his boxers down his legs and kicked them off, and crawled back onto the bed.
He tried to settle between my legs, but I squirmed as a bent rod stuck into my shoulder, and he leaned to the side to avoid one against his shin. “Here,” he said, reaching over to grab a pillow off the floor. “Sit up a sec,” and as I did he placed it behind my head. “That better?”
“Not really,” I said as my tailbone was suddenly pushing against something metal.
“How about we just …” I said, as I slunk down so my ass was sinking in a little pothole created by a break in metal ribbing.
Bracing himself in a plank-like position, Knox let me settle in, then lowered himself and sunk his weight into me as he took my mouth in his once again. “Is this OK?” he asked between kisses, his hands roaming down over my breasts, down my sides, around my hips and ass, seeking to pull me onto his length.
I nodded and leaned up to kiss him again.
“Baby, I need to hear you say it,” he said against my lips. “Is this OK … What we’re doing?” His eyes were pleading with mine, and I knew what he was asking.
“Yes,” I said with another nod.
Relief flashed across his face as he crushed his lips back to mine, took his dick in his hand, and guided it inside me. We both let out an “ahh” at the feel of him entering me. After all our time apart, the months it had been since the last time we had sex, it felt like the universe was realigning.
Slowly, at first, Knox pulled out and pushed back in, kissing me the entire time. I hitched a leg around his hip as he ran a hand up my thigh and gripped my ass, pulling and pushing me in time with him.
My back was arching over a metal bar, and I’m pretty sure his elbow was teetering on a sharp edge, as well, but neither of us faltered. We were all breathy panting and greedy hands and rhythmic humping as we climbed to a place we knew we could find together, a place we missed, a place where we didn’t have to feel sad anymore.
“Oh God! Fuck, Lizzie,” Knox nearly choked into my neck as his pumps became erratic. “I’m close, baby. I need you to come for me.”
With that plea, my body started to coil, building until I came apart with a moan of his name against his shoulder, my teeth biting into the hard flesh to muffle the noise.
And he grunted out his own release. He collapsed onto me, his full weight pressing down on me for what felt like minutes, before he finally, slowly, pulled up and looked down at me, caressing my face with a hand and kissing me, before pulling out of me.
He reached down and grabbed my bottoms and helped slide them up my legs, and I lifted my hips so we could get them all the way up. He kissed my stomach then pulled my shirt down. Then he found his boxers and pulled them up before we both shimmied our way back up the mattress, and he laid on his left side, perched on his elbow, looking down at me as I laid on my back.
Knox cradled the side of my face in his hand and leaned his forehead against mine. He shuddered out a breath against my lips, then kissed them softly, then kissed my nose, my eyelids, my cheeks. He buried his face in my neck, slid his hand down over my shoulder and pulled my arm around him as he wound his leg through mine, intertwining us as best he could.
We didn’t say anything as we held each other and fell asleep.