Chapter 4 #2
I walked to the edge of the loading dock, the gravel of the alleyway crunching softly beneath my rain boots, and leaned my back against the rough, wet brick of the exterior wall.
I tilted my head back, closing my eyes, and let the freezing rain hit my face. It washed away the sweat, the grime, and the lingering, phantom scent of the isolation ward. But it couldn’t wash away the heavy, rotting weight in my chest.
My legs gave out.
It wasn’t a dramatic collapse. It was simply the end of my endurance.
The adrenaline that had kept my heart beating and my feet moving for three days finally evaporated, leaving nothing behind but a hollow, vibrating exhaustion.
I slid down the brick wall, my boots slipping slightly on the wet concrete, until I was sitting flat on the ground.
The ruined, mud-caked velvet of my gown pooled around me in the puddles, soaking up the freezing water.
I pulled my knees up to my chest, wrapping my arms tightly around them, and rested my forehead against the damp denim.
I thought about Arthur. I thought about the sheer, unfathomable cruelty of a world that allowed a creature to suffer for a decade in the dark.
And then, because my defenses were entirely obliterated, I thought about Hayes.
I thought about him sitting in his pristine glass dining room, surrounded by people who measured the value of a life in profit margins and stock portfolios.
I thought about the way his hand had felt against my back—not as a partner offering support, but as a warden maintaining control of his asset.
I thought about the raised finger in the kitchen, dismissing my existence entirely because an overseas phone call held more capital value.
I was so profoundly, overwhelmingly lonely. I was married to a man who possessed half the city, but I was entirely alone in the dark, sitting in a puddle in an industrial alleyway.
The heavy metal fire door creaked open behind me, the hinges grinding in the quiet dawn.
I didn’t lift my head. I didn’t have the energy to pretend I was okay.
The slow, steady crunch of boots on gravel approached, stopping a few feet away.
“You know, normally, people wear scrubs over their street clothes to protect them,” Brooks’s voice filtered through the sound of the rain. It was low, raspy, and completely devoid of judgment.
I turned my head slightly, resting my cheek against my knees, and opened my eyes.
Brooks was standing near the edge of the loading dock.
He had stripped off his own protective gear, revealing a faded, incredibly soft-looking flannel shirt and a pair of worn denim jeans.
He held a cheap, white styrofoam cup in his hand, a thin wisp of steam rising from the lid to combat the freezing rain.
He didn’t look at me with pity. He looked at me with the exact same bone-deep exhaustion I felt echoing in my own veins.
“I didn’t really have time to change,” I murmured, my voice raspy.
Brooks stepped closer, crouching down so he was level with me. The damp wool of his flannel smelled like wet asphalt and dog treats—a scent so entirely mundane and real that it anchored me to the concrete.
He held out the styrofoam cup. “It’s from the machine in the breakroom. It tastes lawful, but it’s hot.”
I reached out, my fingers trembling violently as they brushed against his knuckles. The heat of the thin cup burned my palms, a sharp, necessary contrast to the freezing rain soaking through my clothes.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Brooks didn’t stand up. He shifted his weight, sitting down on the wet concrete right beside me, leaning his broad back against the same brick wall. He stretched his long legs out into the rain, completely ignoring the fact that we were sitting in a puddle.
He looked at my ruined gown, the heavy midnight-blue velvet peeking out from beneath the faded green scrub top, stained with mud, bleach, and blood.
“I have to ask,” Brooks said quietly, staring out at the gray alleyway. “Did you actually wear velvet to a parvo outbreak?”
The sheer, staggering absurdity of the question hit me precisely in the center of my fractured chest.
I pictured the immaculate dining room. I pictured Warren Carmichael cutting into duck confit while I was secretly reading a text about sixty dying dogs.
I pictured the hundreds of thousands of dollars Hayes had spent orchestrating a single dinner to impress a syndicate, juxtaposed against the ten-year-old golden retriever who had died on a concrete floor because a breeder wouldn’t spend ten dollars on a vaccine.
The disconnect was so vast, so incredibly insane, that my exhausted brain simply short-circuited.
A laugh tore out of my throat.
It was a jagged, breathless sound, tearing through the quiet alleyway.
I threw my head back against the wet brick, staring up at the miserable, weeping Seattle sky, and laughed at the absolute madness of my two lives.
I laughed at the velvet. I laughed at the battery-acid coffee.
I laughed because if I didn’t, the sheer weight of the tragedy would crush me into dust.
“I did,” I gasped out, a hysterical edge bleeding into the sound. “I wore a five-thousand-dollar designer gown to a biohazard zone.”
Brooks turned his head to look at me, a soft, weary smile touching the corners of his mouth. He didn’t laugh with me, but he didn’t look away. He just watched me unravel, offering the quiet, steady presence of a man who understood exactly what the breaking point looked like.
But the laugh couldn’t sustain itself. It was built on a foundation of absolute grief, and the foundation was already crumbling.
The sharp, jagged sound caught in my throat, snagging on the memory of Arthur’s final, rattling breath. The laugh cracked. It splintered and fractured, instantly morphing into a raw, ragged sob that tore its way out of my lungs.
I dropped my head forward, the styrofoam cup slipping from my numb fingers. It hit the concrete, the hot, dark liquid splashing across my boots, but I didn’t care. I curled inward, burying my face in my hands, and shattered.
I wept for Arthur. I wept for the sixty terrified animals still fighting for their lives inside the building.
I wept for the cavernous, silent mansion in Medina, and for the husband who looked right through me.
The dam I had spent three days meticulously reinforcing completely disintegrated, washing me away in a flood of cold, terrifying grief.
I didn’t have to weather it alone.
Brooks shifted instantly. He closed the small distance between us, reaching out with both arms. He pulled me against his side, his large hand wrapping around the back of my head, pressing my face into the curve of his shoulder.
It was a tight, desperate, and entirely platonic embrace. It was the physical tether of a colleague catching a comrade before they fell off the edge of the world.
“I’ve got you, Del,” he murmured roughly, his voice a steady rumble against my ear. “I’ve got you. Let it out.”
I sank into the solid, unyielding warmth of his chest. My hands gripped the damp fabric of his flannel shirt, twisting the material in my fists as I sobbed. I cried until my ribs ached and my throat burned, entirely consumed by the physical release of the pain.
I clung to him, desperately grateful for the simple, profound comfort of a human being who understood the darkness and was willing to sit in it with me.
I remained buried in his shoulder, blinded by my own tears and deafened by the rain, entirely unaware of the long-lens camera across the street, capturing the raw, brutal moment and freezing it into a devastating lie.