6. Chapter Six
Chapter Six
I don’t think either of us sleeps for what little remains of the night. I doze, but I’m too focused on keeping alert in case Tobias needs something. And I hear him rustling blankets constantly in a way no sleeping person would. Although, of course, he never asks me for anything.
It makes sense that he wouldn’t, considering the one thing he did ask me for, I refused to give him. But Lord help me, I’m trying to have some boundaries. I’m already forcing myself to admit I have had an infatuation with him that’s all bound up with how much I want to help him. None of that sounds fucking healthy. Add that to the fact that he’s here and has nowhere else to go. Crawling into bed and holding him exactly like I want to is dangerous territory that I can’t let myself enter.
Just because I caved at the start, when holding him seemed like the only thing between Tobias and totally falling apart, doesn’t mean it can become a habit.
So, instead of sleeping, I lay on the couch and stew in my guilt. When it gets to late morning, around the time I might normally get up, I slip into the kitchen to brew some coffee. I have a headache in my left temple, accompanied by the kind of tightness that’s threatening to become a migraine, but hasn’t committed yet. Caffeine might head it off at the pass.
“Hey.”
The sound of Tobias’s voice is quiet and raspy, but I’m lost in my thoughts that it still makes me jump.
Turning around, I see him leaning heavily against the wall before making his way over to the table. He looks like an extra from a zombie movie that’s on the verge of fraying apart, so on instinct, I duck toward him to help. Which is a stupid move, because it’s sudden and aggressive and makes him flinch away, hurting him enough in the process to make him gasp.
We’re both breathing hard after barely a few seconds of uncomfortable interaction, and he’s still struggling to stand. Slowly and carefully, I reach for him again. He lets me take hold of his arm, even though he stiffens under my touch, and I help him get to one of the chairs I have around my little table that passes for a dining area.
“Jesus, you scared me. Why didn’t you shout? I would have helped you up.”
Tobias huffs but doesn’t make eye contact with me.
“It’s fine. You don’t need to make such a big deal about it. I’m sore and bruised up. I don’t need to bother you for every little thing when I’m already trampling all over your place.”
I give the words a second to settle before I answer, busying myself with pouring coffee for both of us, then placing the mugs on the table, along with some cheap creamer I find in the back of my fridge that he might want. I’m about to sit down, but as an afterthought I catch myself, pulling sugar out of a cabinet first.
He probably hasn’t eaten in a long time. That should happen soon.
Mentally planning out the rest of the day is taking up so much of my attention, I almost forget to reply entirely. Then I notice that Tobias is finally looking at me and snap my attention back to the real world.
“It’s not a burden to have you here. I’m glad you came somewhere you could be safe. I worry about you. I know I don’t really know you, but still.”
There’s a hint of an eye roll in Tobias’s expression, but it’s so endearing I can’t bring myself to be annoyed. I’m grateful anytime he shows an emotion other than self-hatred, self-pity or abject blankness .
“I’m fine.” There’s a pause, then some sincerity creeps into his voice, although he’s not looking me in the eye anymore as he blows on his coffee, which he didn’t end up putting anything into. “Thank you, Gunnar.”
“Of course. You’re welcome to stay here as long as you want. What did Micah say? Is there anything you need me to get for you?”
Tobias shakes his head, still looking down. He still looks pallid, blue bruising spread over too-pale skin, but it’s a little better than last night. My eyes drift and get caught on the tiny smattering of freckles over the bridge of his nose. They’re faint—normally almost blending in with the sand-colored blush of his skin—but so perfectly placed they almost look fake. You have to look so closely to notice, but whenever I do, I can’t look away.
“He said I’m fine.” Tobias holds the mug in front of his face, the sleeves of my giant hoodie covering his fingers, and squirming a little. “I’ll heal.”
I don’t say anything, and then he finally looks up at me and sighs again, a little more dramatically this time.
“No one’s dying, Gunnar. You can take a breath.”
There’s a hint of a smile behind his sass, and it makes me smile back. A real smile, for the first time since he got here, and I threw all my energy into worrying about him.
This time, when I take a deep breath in before letting it out, I swear half the tension in my body goes with it. I stand up from the table, letting myself graze my hand along his shoulders for a second. Hopefully, there are no hard feelings about last night.
“I’m going to get you some food. What do you want?”
He looks up at me, a little confused this time.
“You don’t need to do that. I’m fine. Thank you.”
I can’t stop myself from raising an eyebrow at him, but he doesn’t relent. “I have plenty of food and you haven’t eaten. If you don’t pick, I’m picking for you, but you’re eating something one way or the other.”
Tobias chews on his bottom lip for a second and then shrugs. “Whatever you want.”
Close enough to a ‘yes’. I hum for a second but decide not to fight him on it. Instead, I focus on pulling things out of the pantry and the ancient fridge. I have enough to make something that passes for a real meal—eggs, sausage, tomatoes, toast. It’ll do. Living on my own for so long has made me lazy, and I hardly ever cook anything more complicated than an egg or something I can reheat. Especially when I eat down at the bar half the time, anyway. Not that it’s doing my health any favors. But he needs to eat real food right now.
While I start frying and toasting things, Tobias’s gaze follows me. His expression is carefully neutral, but he watches all my actions intently. I’m not sure why, but it doesn’t bother me, so I don’t point it out. Maybe if he gets relaxed enough, I can get some more information out of him.
“Do you live with him?” I ask, treading lightly.
It’s childish, but I don’t even want to let the man’s name pass my lips.
Tobias doesn’t get upset, though. He does snort.
“No. Hell, no. Even if I wanted to, which I never would, I don’t think his creepy boss would allow it. Blue-collar crime organizations are not exactly known for flying the rainbow flag and accepting alternative lifestyles ,” he says, using air quotes and wearing a disdainful expression.
“Okay, so where do you live?”
He gets quiet for a second. Eventually, he answers me. “With my lola. My grandmother.”
The food is ready, because it was all pretty quick to cook, so I messily dish it onto two plates and drop one in front of him before returning to my own seat with mine. He picks up the fork and looks at it, but doesn’t seem eager to eat.
“Got it. And you didn’t want to go home because…?”
Tobias looks at me, but it’s enough to make his point. I assume going home looking like that would have forced him to confront a lot of things he doesn’t want to, and probably would have ended in a non-optional trip to the hospital and potentially the police station. The way a normal, loving grandmother would respond.
“Do you want to at least tell her you’re safe?”
I don’t think he had his phone with him when he showed up. He barely had clothes. I can make an educated guess that he climbed out a window or something as soon as he had an opening, and he’s not offering up any details yet.
“Yeah, maybe.” His attention turns inward for a second. “Actually, yes. Can I use your phone, please?”
“Sure.” I pull it out, unlock it and hand it to him, then leave my plate for a minute to give him some privacy.
I pretend to be doing something important on the computer for the five minutes he talks on the phone. He keeps his voice low, so I can’t really hear what he’s saying, and a few times I don’t think he’s speaking in English. But his tone is unmistakable.
Ashamed. Stressed. Apologetic. Frightened.
I can tell when he hangs up, but I give him a minute because there’s still a heavy sense of shame lingering around him. Once he’s had time to take a breath, I go back toward the kitchen.
“Are you okay?”
As soon as I speak, Tobias wipes all traces of emotion from his face and gives me a blank expression. It’s not quite quick enough, though. I can see that he’s hurting, even if I don’t know which specific thing is causing it right now. There’s a lot to choose from.
“It’s fine. She’s sick, so I hate not being able to check on her, but she can’t see me like this. Plus, he’ll be watching her place, I’m sure.”
I frown, because that hadn’t occurred to me before, but it definitely should have. Maybe I’ll ask Sav later if there’s anything we can do about it. Tobias’s grandmother getting caught in the crosshairs of that lunatic is the last thing anyone needs. I know if I ask him about it right now, it won’t help his anxiety, though.
“How much help does she need? Can anyone else take care of her for a while, if you say you had to go away for work, or something? Do you have a mom or dad?”
It’s the only way I’ll ever phrase that question, instead of ‘where’s your mom?’, because it’s neutral enough that someone can say ‘no’ and we leave it at that. I’m not forcing their hand at revealing whatever tragic story they have hidden inside them, because most of us have one.
I hope I’m not forcing them, at least. That’s my intention.
Tobias scrunches up his face in a way that would be cute if it weren’t in such agonizing context. He lets out a sigh, and I’m already preparing to drop it when he answers the question with more than the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ I was expecting.
“My mom lives in Oklahoma on a rez. She married this guy who’s Chickasaw a long time ago and had three more kids with him. But one of my sisters has asthma and the easiest way for her to get healthcare is if they live there, so when Lola started to need help, it didn’t make sense for her to drag everyone back here and make all of us spend even more on medical bills. I was a lot older and getting in everybody’s way, anyway; it made sense for me to leave. Mom can’t leave the kids just to come up here and take care of my mess. I wouldn’t ask her to do that.”
Well, we don’t have time to unpack all that right now. But suppressing the urge to is really freaking difficult.
Tobias is still standing up, shifting awkwardly on his feet and chewing on the skin around his thumb in a way that belies his anxiety. He keeps swaying until I suddenly remember something.
“Shit, Tobias, your ankle. Why are you standing up? Come sit on the couch.”
I reach out to grab his elbow to help him balance, and for the fiftieth time since he showed up, I’m careless about it. My movement is sudden, and he flinches away. Which makes me jerk my hand back, and then we’re staring at each other.
Again.
The blank expression from before has been slowly chipped away, and I can see the churn of multiple conflicting emotions. All with a toxic coating of fear over the top. I want to reach for him again, but I already feel like I’m making the same mistakes again and again, so I don’t.
Tobias’s mouth is hanging open, and there’s a sudden rush of color to his face. I can see it like it’s happening in slow-motion—his cheeks flush, his jaw sets tight like he’s trying to control himself, and then his eyes are glossy.
I don’t know if it’s because I just scared him or because a bunch of other things just hit him at once, but it doesn’t matter.
“Oh, honey.” The endearment slips past my lips of its own volition.
I’m holding myself back from a lot of things right now, but that’s the small fight that I lost.
Tobias takes one rough breath. No tears are falling, but his eyes are shining and bloodshot, getting worse by the second. He keeps looking at my face before darting his gaze away, like he’s grappling with something inside himself as well.
Then he takes a step toward me, and I see the moment his resolve breaks. I reach for him again, but this time he doesn’t flinch. He curls into me, letting me wrap my arms around him and hold him close as he starts to shake. Not as bad as last night, but still bad.
His body sags in my grip, even though he’s still not crying. He’s clinging to me, but it’s weak and formless, and between that and his ankle, I’m worried he’s about to be taken by exhaustion and slide right down to the floor.
Without stopping to second-guess myself, I lean down a little to get a better grip on him and then hoist him up my body. It’s awkward, because he’s still a full-grown man, even if he’s smaller than me, but he unfolds into the hold immediately. His legs wrap around my hips and his arms are slung around my neck, as we press together from chest to hip so I can walk him over to the couch.
At least I go to the couch, not the bedroom. There. That’s a boundary.
Sort of.
He holds the same position, even once we’re sitting, and he feels like an anchor in my lap. Not in a bad way. Like something steadying that I want to orbit around forever.
Gunnar, you must stop this.
This is pathetic. I’m an adult, and not only am I attracted to someone much younger than me and vulnerable, it’s apparently progressed to shitty high-school level poetic mooning.
But none of that knowledge stops me from stroking his hair while he breathes deeply and leans his weight into mine. He deserves at least that much.
I’m not sure how long we sit together for. Tobias doesn’t say anything, but I guess he rarely does. It’s long enough that my thoughts wander, and at some point, I remember that I’m supposed to be downstairs helping Sav open.
Shit.
I pull back as much as I can to get a look at Tobias’s face, which isn’t easy, considering I’m pinned between him and the couch.
“Hey,” I whisper. “How are you?”
He doesn’t answer. He’s looking at me, at least.
“I need to go downstairs soon—”
“I’m fine.”
He cuts me off, his voice cold and dispassionate. As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he pulls back from me. Tobias swipes at his face with the back of his hand, even though he never actually cried, and stares over my shoulder for a few seconds before attempting to clamber off my lap. His ankle almost gives out on him when he tries to stand, but he grits his teeth and catches himself, even though it’s not necessary.
“I told you, you don’t have to babysit me. You can go do your job.”
“Do you want to come with me? You can hang out behind the bar and keep me company.” I want to reach for him again, but we’re clearly in the cold part of his hot and cold reactions. Not that I blame him for it, after what he’s been through.
He exhales, giving me a world-weary expression that doesn’t fit his delicate features. The ones that make him look even younger than he is sometimes, if he didn’t always look so fucking exhausted.
“Where Eamon will be waiting for me? No, thank you.”
“You don’t know that. He probably has no idea where you are.”
Tobias shrugs, flicking his gaze around so he’s looking anywhere but at me.
“Can I take a shower?” he asks.
“Of course.” At least there’s less chance of him falling asleep in a shower like he did in the tub. “Help yourself to anything you need.”
“Thanks.” He looks at me one last time before heading for the bathroom. “I’ll see you when you get back from work.”
Once again, I’m left with a knot of discomfort from the interaction. I keep feeling like he’s drifting away from me, but the closer I try to keep him to me, the harder he seems to fight.
There’s nothing I can do about it now. Work first, Tobias after.
Anxiety about it all the way through, I’m sure.