Chapter 14 #2
“I’m sorry,” he said, but not the useless kind. The sharp, clean kind that acknowledged a slice you could still bleed from years later. He slid his hand to the back of my neck, warm and steady. “You don’t have to find her in here,” he said, tapping two fingers gently to my temple. “Not alone.”
“I’m not used to anyone … seeing it. Being in it.” My mouth twisted. “This part of me doesn’t have company.”
“It does now.” No drama. Just fact. “If you wake up like that again, you wake me. Or I’ll wake to you. Either way, I’m here.”
I stared at him because my reflex was to argue.
To say I didn’t want to be a problem or a burden or a project.
To say you don’t know what you’re signing up for.
But he did know, in a way—maybe not the particulars, but the shape of damage and how it moved in a person.
And he looked at me like the idea of showing up didn’t scare him, like it was a thing he’d already decided to do before I asked.
“Okay,” I said, and it felt like stepping onto a dock that looked rickety and discovering it held.
He pulled me in again, the circle of his arms familiar now, my cheek pressed to his chest. His heartbeat beat an argument against the side of my face: present, present, present. We lay like that until my breathing matched his again and the tremor checked out of my muscles.
“Tell me about her,” he said into my hair when the quiet went gentle. “Your mom.”
I thought about that carefully. “She sang along to the radio like every song belonged to her,” I said, surprised by the automatic smile that tugged at my mouth. “Off-key. She would change the lyrics when she didn’t like them. She had no respect for verses.”
He chuckled, low. “She sounds like trouble.”
“She was,” I said. “The good kind. Mostly.” The smile softened, then slid away. “Her name was Marissa.”
I swallowed, tracing an invisible line on his chest with my fingertip.
“She wore red lipstick every single day, even to the grocery store. She kept a jar of sand from every beach she’d ever visited—little glass jars with masking-tape labels in her handwriting.
And she smelled like coconut lotion and coffee and the kind of perfume you buy because it reminds you of being twenty, not because it’s fancy. ”
He stayed quiet, listening. The kind of quiet that invited more.
“She used to dance in the kitchen when she was happy,” I said, voice softer now.
“No music sometimes. She’d just hum and twirl a wooden spoon like a microphone.
I remember thinking she looked like the happiest person in the world.
I think that’s what I miss most. The way she could make a small space feel like sunlight. ”
His thumb brushed under my eye, catching a tear I hadn’t realized had fallen there. “She’d be proud of you,” he said simply.
I wanted to believe that. So, I let myself, just for a moment. Then I tucked myself closer until there was no room between us for sorrow to wedge itself in.
We drifted. Sleep came back wary, then easier. The second time, it didn’t try to drown me.
Dawn arrived with her salt-silver light, sliding fingers across the floorboards and up the foot of the bed, warm as a hand on my ankle.
I woke with my face tucked into the curve where his shoulder met his chest, my leg thrown over his hips like my body had made executive decisions while I was gone.
He was already awake, but he hadn’t moved, hadn’t dislodged me.
His palm drew slow lines down my back, messages written in a language my muscles understood better than my head did: safe, steady, stay.
“You with me?” he asked, voice still sleep-rough.
“I am.” My voice worked. My chest felt less tight. The dream lingered—present, but losing its shape.
He kissed my hair. “How’s your head?”
“Like it could use coffee,” I said, and he smiled into me.
“Coffee’s a plan.”
I stretched, cat-slow, and the stretch brushed all the places we’d used each other last night. Gratitude hit me so hard I had to close my eyes for a second. We lay there and listened to morning together. Something in me that had been braced for years … unbraced by degrees.
Eventually, the day tugged at me. The list rose like land under tide. West room leak. Shutters. Dock. Paint.
“I should go see Burl again,” I said, rolling to my back and blinking up at the ceiling crack that had become a landmark. “We burned through half the screws and I want a different grit of sandpaper. Maybe a paint sample.”
“I’ll come,” he said, already pushing up on one elbow, hair a wreck, eyes intent in a way that threatened my ability to do anything except drag him back under the sheet.
I touched his chest, flattened my palm there for a second longer than necessary. “Thank you,” I said. “But I think the drive alone might help clear my head.” I offered him a rueful smile. “Reset the morning.”
He studied me—saw more than I said, like always—then nodded once, the acceptance easy. “I’ll start measuring trim out back,” he said. “And make coffee, if Maude hasn’t already.”
I laughed, then slid out of bed, gathered my clothes, and let the floor cool my bare feet while the day arranged itself around us.
I showered, dressed, kissed him once at the door, and headed down the stairs. I locked up behind me and stepped into the bright marsh morning, pointed the little rental toward Johns Island, and drove to Burl’s.