Chapter 11 Tex #2
I hear the balcony door open behind me. Footsteps, light and quiet. Not Sheila. Sheila's footsteps are brisk and sound like a woman with places to be. These are careful. The footsteps of someone who is choosing to be here and isn't sure about the choice.
I don't turn around. I keep my hands on the railing, my eyes on the dark water and I wait.
Stormy comes up beside me. Looking out at the same water stretching to the horizon under a sky full of stars.
Then he touches me.
His hand lands on my arm. My forearm, just above the wrist, right where I'm gripping the railing. His fingers are light and tentative, like he's never consciously touched another person before. The contact is so gentle I almost can't feel it.
But I feel it.
I feel it the way you feel a change in temperature, the way you feel the first drop of rain before the storm. Every nerve in my arm fires at once. He's never touched me before.
"I wanted to thank you," he says.
I look at his hand on my arm. His fingers are thin and pale against my skin, and they're trembling slightly, and I realize what this is costing him. He walked up here, voluntarily, and put his hand on me.
"You don't have to thank me," I say. "Are you okay? Let me see your arm."
He holds out the arm the biker grabbed. I don't touch it. I lean in and look. There's a red mark where the man's fingers pressed, not bad, not bruising, just the imprint of a grip on skin that marks easily. It'll fade in an hour.
"You're okay," I say in relief.
"I'm okay." His hand is still on my arm. He hasn't taken it away. "Nobody's ever done that before."
"Done what?"
"Stood up for me. Stepped in like that." He's looking at the water, not at me. "Nobody's ever... I've never had anyone get between me and somebody else. I didn't know that was a real thing people did."
The words land one at a time. Nobody's ever stood up for him. Nobody's ever stepped in. He's been grabbed and worse, grabbed in ways that were nothing like tonight, and every time, he was alone. Every time, there was nobody between him and whatever was happening to him.
"Stormy." I turn toward him. His hand stays on my arm because I haven't moved my arm. I will not move my arm. I will stand on this balcony until I turn to concrete before I break this contact that he chose to make. "Listen to me. I need you to hear this."
He looks at me. Those blue-green eyes, the color of the water before a storm, dark and deep and full of things I can't see the bottom of.
"I will never let anyone put their hands on you.
Not in the bar, not in the parking lot, not anywhere.
As long as I am breathing, nobody touches you.
Not unless you want them to." I hold his gaze.
I don't blink. I don't soften it. I need him to see that I mean this.
"I need you to feel safe here. With me. I need you to know that you are safe with me more than anything.
And if it takes me the rest of my life to prove that to you, that's fine.
I've got time. I've got all the time in this world. I swear, I will prove that to you."
His hand tightens on my arm. Just a fraction. Just enough that I can feel his fingers press into my skin, and the tremble is gone. His hand is steady now.
"I do," he says. Quiet. Barely a whisper. "I do feel safe with you."
I let out a breath. I can take a full breath now for the first time since I pushed open his bedroom door and saw the bruises.
We stand on the balcony. His hand stays on my arm.
The parking lot below us is coming back to life, the noise rising again, the music and the laughter returning the way they do when a tense moment passes and people decide it's okay to have fun again.
I can hear Sheila's voice cutting through the crowd, getting things back on track.
"I should get back to work," Stormy says.
"Take a few more minutes if you need them."
"I don't need them." He lifts his hand off my arm, and the place where it was feels cold. Even in the night heat. "I'm good, really."
He turns to go back inside. At the door, he stops. He doesn't turn around.
"Tex?"
"Yeah?"
"The guy. The biker. He was just drunk. He didn't mean anything."
"I know."
"You scared the living hell out of him."
"I sure hope so."
A pause. And then, so quiet I almost miss it over the music and the crowd, "But you didn't scare me."
The door closes behind him. I listen to his footsteps going down the stairs, lighter than when they came up.
You didn't scare me.
Thank God. I give myself another minute. I go back downstairs and take my place at the grill. Sheila catches my eye from behind the bar and raises one eyebrow. I nod once and she nods back. We're good. That's our entire conversation about what just happened.
Stormy is back on the floor. He's moving through the tables with a tray in his hand and his shoulders straight.
When he passes the biker's table, the biker doesn't look up and Stormy doesn't look down.
The distance between them is exactly the width of someone who just learned that the biggest man in the parking lot is on his side.
The night goes on. The music plays. I cook burgers and watch Stormy work. I think about his hand on my arm, those thin, trembling fingers choosing to touch me. He chose to close the distance that he's measured and maintained since the day I found him in a storm.
He chose to touch me. And then he said I didn't scare him.
That means something. I know it does.
I flip a burger and I smile into the smoke. I don't know what's coming and I don't know what we are. I don't know how any of this ends but I know one thing.
We're finally getting somewhere.