Chapter 13 Tex #3
I walk through the shallows. The water drops to my waist, then my thighs, then my knees. The waves push against my legs but I'm a beast and I've got my feet on solid ground. Nothing in this water is stopping me now.
No fucking way.
Sheila is on the beach. She's run the whole way, watching us.
She's got my clothes and boots bundled in her arms and she's standing at the waterline.
When she sees us come out of the waves, her hand goes to her mouth and she lets out a sound that I've only heard her make once before, the day my daddy died.
"I called 911," she yells. Her voice is shaking. I've never heard Sheila's voice shake. "They're overwhelmed. Rip currents all up and down the beach. Rescue is stretched. They said they'd send someone when they could but they don't know when."
"Don't need them," I say. "Call them back. I've got him. We're okay."
I walk past her. Up the beach, my feet sinking in the hot sand, carrying Stormy against my chest. He's barely conscious. His eyes are half closed and his grip has loosened to almost nothing. His body is limp against mine, the dead weight of total exhaustion. But he's breathing. Steady and alive.
I carry him through the open door of the bar. Past the wrecked first floor, past the half-finished walls and the construction supplies and the tools. Up the stairs to the second floor. Up to the third. Down the hallway to the bathroom.
I step into the shower with him and turn on the water.
Warm, not hot, and it runs over both of us, washing away the saltwater and sand.
He's still wrapped around me. His face is against my neck and his arms are loose around my shoulders.
His legs have slipped down to my hips. I'm holding his full weight and it's nothing.
"I've got you, baby," I say again, because it's the truest thing in the world right now. "You're okay now, Stormy. You're with me and you're safe."
The water runs over us. His breathing steadies against my neck. I stand there under the shower and hold him, letting the saltwater wash off of both of us.
When the water runs clear, I turn it off.
I shift him gently, carefully, and he lets me.
He lets me set him on his feet, his back against the shower wall, and he sways but stays upright while I grab towels.
I wrap one around him and I dry him the way you'd dry something precious, careful and thorough, his arms and his legs and his hair.
He lets me touch him. Everywhere the towel goes, he lets it. His eyes are half closed and his face is open and unguarded. For once, he's not flinching.
I strip the wet bathing suit off of him and wrap him in a dry towel. I peel off my own soaked boxers and wrap a towel around my waist. I pick him up again like a child this time. He folds against me as if he were made to be carried, his head on my shoulder, his arm across my chest.
I take him to my room. My bed. I lay him down and pull the covers over him. He's there, in my bed, exhausted and alive, and his eyes open enough to look at me.
I turn to go get him water. He swallowed a lot of saltwater and he needs fresh water. He doesn't let go.
His arms are still around my neck from carrying him and when I try to pull back his grip tightens.
Not strong, he's got almost nothing left, but desperate.
His fingers dig into my shoulders and his body curls toward me and a sound comes out of him that isn't a word.
It's the sound a person makes when the one solid thing in this world starts to pull away.
"Don't leave me." His voice is raw, scraped down to almost nothing by salt water and yelling. "Please. Don't leave me."
I look at his face. His eyes are barely open but the terror in them is total. The terror of a person who has been left so many times that leaving is the only thing he knows how to expect.
I don't pull away. I don't put him down. I do what my body has been wanting to do since I carried him out of the water.
I climb into the bed with him.
I lie down on my back and I pull him with me and he comes with his body folding against mine, his head on my chest, his arm across my stomach, his legs tangled with mine.
He curls into me with every part of himself.
His face presses into the space below my collarbone and his fist grips the towel at my waist. His body shakes against mine in tremors he can't control.
He's holding on the way he held on in the water. Full-body. Total. Like if he lets go of any single point of contact, the current will take him again.
"I'm right here, darling," I say. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm right here."
His grip tightens. His breathing is still ragged against my chest. Each exhale damp and warm on my skin, and I can feel his heart hammering through his ribs into mine. I don't move or adjust. I don't wrap my arms around him because I don't know if being held is different from holding on.
What if his arms around me feels good but my arms around him feels like a cage? I keep my hands where they are, one on the mattress, one on my own chest, and I let him hold me without holding him back.
He cries. Not loudly. Not the kind of crying that comes with sound.
The kind that comes with shaking, with the silent convulsion of a body releasing pain it's been holding for too long.
I feel it in his shoulders, in the way his ribs expand and contract against my side, in the wet warmth that spreads on my chest where his face is pressed.
He cries the way a person cries when they've been so scared for so long that the fear has become structural and taking it down, even one piece of it, brings the whole wall with it.
I stay still and talk because talking is the thing I know how to do.
"You're okay now. You're in my bed. You're warm and you're breathing. Nothing is going to hurt you. Not the water. Not anything. I'm here and I'll take care of you."
The shaking slows. His breathing evens out. His grip loosens, just easing, the fist at my waist opening into a palm, his legs relaxing against mine. The survival grip easing. Still holding on. But softer now. Choosing instead of clinging.
His breathing deepens. Slows. The steady rhythm of someone sliding into sleep, the body finally letting go of the emergency, the nervous system standing down.
He's asleep. Against my chest, on my heartbeat, wrapped around me. I lie there and listen to him breathe.
I should get up and get him water. I should check on Sheila, who is probably wearing a hole in the floor pacing. I should do a dozen things.
I don't move.
My brave, scared, beautiful little Stormy. Floating in the Gulf of Mexico in a hot pink bathing suit, drowning, and the first thing he said when I got to him was you came.
Fuck, yeah, I came.
And I'm not going anywhere.