Chapter 11 Cal
CAL
It doesn’t happen often.
Beck waking up screaming.
The nightmares are frequent, I know that, but the broken, sorrowful cries that come from deep within his soul and rip apart the air are so rare they snatch me from the depths of unconsciousness and immediately send me reaching for my gun.
Tonight is no different.
The cold metal of my piece greets my warm palm before I’ve even really opened my eyes, and I’m on my feet in an instant, back to the wall, bleary eyes scanning the dark room only to find there is no threat.
Not a physical one at least. My chest is heaving with unspent adrenaline as I catch sight of Beck’s writhing form on the bed.
His face is a twisted ball of pain, a clear indication of the internal war he’s fighting.
I return my weapon back to its rightful place, knowing neither it nor I will be of any assistance.
All I can do is wait.
For the dream to end. For the pain to stop.
With a sigh, I wipe the sleep from my eye and turn on the lamp by my bedside, hoping the soft light will start the process of waking Beck up.
I know from experience that trying to wake him up on my own won’t do either of us any good, so I sit on the edge of the bed and slowly peel the covers away from his body.
He shivers, turning toward me and the light even though he’s still asleep.
A whimper passes through his trembling lips as he claws at the sheets.
“Cameron.”
My heart clenches. Dreams about his son are the most painful to witness.
He always cries for him the longest, tears for a tarnished past and a stolen future streaming down his cheeks and making me wish for Selene because she’s more familiar with this strand of grief than I could ever be.
I’ve never fathered a child, never brought a life into this world only to have to go through it without the light of the young soul I was supposed to nurture and protect, so everything I say in hopes of comforting Beck feels empty when it comes to Cameron.
Selene’s wouldn’t though.
There would be a weight to her reassurances, a depth to her promises of brighter days, a sad but genuine understanding conveyed in every touch, kiss and hug.
Tears born of inadequacy and longing blur my vision as impatience rises in my chest. I want Selene.
I need her. We both do. Everything about who Beck and I are and how we work is made better by her presence, and I’m tired of living without her.
Tired of not being able to hold her or love her and get those things back in return.
Beck jolts awake, his lips parted on a scream that doesn’t meet the air as he sits up. I watch him scan the room for threats and wait for him to realize there’s no one here but us.
“You’re safe,” I whisper, keeping my voice soft to avoid startling him.
His head jerks in my direction, eyes wild for a moment as he processes my features. It only takes a second for him to adjust, and he swallows hard, falling back against the pillows with a frown pulling down the corners of his lips.
“Was I screaming again?”
He won’t meet my eyes. That familiar cloak of shame slipping around his shoulders and squeezing until his breaths turn uneven. I crawl over the twisted sheets and comforter to get to him, grabbing him by the nape and pulling his face into my chest.
“Breathe, Beck.”
Desperate hands claw at my back as gasps turn into sobs that shatter us both. I don’t know how to help him. I don’t know how to fix it, but God do I want to. I would do anything to take this pain from him.
“I keep failing,” he says, voice breaking over the words. “I keep failing him. Every time I see him falling, I leap to catch him but it’s too late. I’m always too late, Cal.”
My hands are everywhere. Passing over his bare scalp and over his shoulders, down his back where the fabric of his tank top is clinging to his sweat-slicked skin.
It’s not enough. I’m not enough. No amount of love and comfort can heal what’s been broken inside of Beck since his birth parents gave him up.
This is an inherent pain, something he’s carried for his entire life that’s only been exacerbated by the long list of losses he’s experienced.
He’s spent a long time ignoring it, pushing it down, hiding inside happiness he doesn’t thinks he deserves in order to escape, but it keeps finding him and I don’t know how to protect him from it.
I kiss the top of his head, my own tears falling onto his skin. “I know, love. I know.”
He doesn’t say more after that. He doesn’t need to.
We’ve shared this exact moment so many times before.
There’s a rhythm to it. A routine. A script we follow that dictates how this scene and the ones after will go.
Beck knows it as well as I do. That’s why he doesn’t protest when I pull away once his tears have subsided.
It’s why he takes my hand and allows me to lead him to the shower.
Why he stands there silently while steam fills the room and I strip off his sweaty clothes, tossing them in the hamper along with my own before moving us both under the spray of hot water.
Beck’s breathing is a mix of shudders and hiccuping gasps that only ease when I begin to work shampoo into his scalp, turning the cleansing act into one of restoration with gentle kneading motions that go on for longer than necessary.
“Cal?”
“Yes, love?”
“You know I don’t have hair, right?”
A soft laugh leaves me as I begin the rinsing process. “Yeah, I know. Your scalp still needs love though.”
He grunts when I start to rub in conditioner. “Feels like you’re coddling me.”
“I definitely am,” I confirm. “Sometimes you need to be coddled.”
His lips twitch with incredulity, gaze sliding away from mine to concentrate on the tile on a spot somewhere over my head. “I don’t deserve it.”
“I don’t think you’re qualified to speak on what you do or don’t deserve, Beck.”
“What?”
“You’re not being kind to yourself,” I tell him, studying his face as water washes away all traces of the conditioner. “Ever since Charlie died, you’ve been giving in to the voice in your head that only exists to feed you lies about yourself.”
“Charlie didn’t just die, Cal. I killed her.”
“You did what you had to do to save your life. To save my life. To save Selene’s life.”
As partners in the Bureau, we’ve seen each other through multiple uses of lethal force. Never once has he struggled this badly. I don’t understand how this time is any different, and if Beck is aware of what sets it apart, he hasn’t let me know yet.
A muscle in his jaw twitches, and I half expect him to pull away but he doesn’t. He stays close, letting me run the washcloth I’ve just covered in body wash over his shoulders and chest.
“I brought Valinsky in,” he says when I’ve made my way to his stomach.
“Even after I saw what he did to…” He swallows hard, struggling to say his wife’s name.
“He fucking tore her apart, Drake. There was blood everywhere, and Cameron….he was…” Beck shakes his head, trapping the gruesome details I already know between his lips.
Then he rolls his head around on his shoulders and starts again.
“I could have killed him. No one in the world would have batted an eye. I wouldn’t have even seen the inside of an interrogation room, but I brought him in. ”
A soft hum of acknowledgment is all I give him as I crouch to wash his lower half. Thick, muscled thighs, toned calves and feet Selene once said were too beautiful to belong to a man keep me distracted as he lays out his flawed reasoning.
“That bastard murdered my family,” he growls, staring down at me.
“He took everything I loved, and I still put the cuffs on him. He’s alive and breathing because even at the lowest moment of my life I was able to exercise enough self-control to keep him that way.
And he wanted me to kill him, Cal. He told me he could see the desire in my eyes, that he could smell the blood lust on me.
What kind of shit is that?” he asks a dark, rueful laugh rumbling his chest. “Blood lust. Like I’m some kind of rabid animal. Like I was some monster. Like I was…”
“Him,” I offer when he refuses to finish the sentence.
Beck eyes glow with anger and self-loathing. “I thought I was better than him, Drake. Really, I did. I’d never felt blood lust or any real desire to kill anyone before. It’s always just been an outcome I couldn’t avoid, but with Charlie it was all I wanted.”
He pauses like he’s expecting me to fill the silence with shock or outrage or disgust, but I remain quiet, placing my hands on his hips and urging him to turn around.
I set about washing the backs of his legs and thighs and the confession hangs in the air.
Beck doesn’t speak again until I’m standing and scrubbing his back.
He glances over his shoulder, brows furrowed.
“Did you hear what I said, Cal? I wanted her dead. I wanted to kill her.”
“I heard you.”
“And you don’t have anything to say to that? She was your friend. You mentored her for years, watched her find her footing in the Bureau—”
“Missed every possible sign that she was a traitor,” I add.
“Who cares if she was a traitor?! That doesn’t make what I did right. It doesn’t change the fact that I wanted her dead, and I acted on that desire. I did everything in my power to make it a reality.”
With my hands on his shoulders, I turn him again, putting his sudsy back in the water’s reach. Onyx eyes rush over my face, searching for something he’ll never find.
“That makes me like him, Cal. It makes me like the monster who took Diana and Cameron from me. It makes me like the bastard who kidnapped Selene and beat her, who put her bruised face on national television and pressed a gun to her temple. And if I’m like them, how can I deserve you?
How can I deserve her? How can I deserve the shared holidays and the house big enough for the three of us and the family we might want to build one day? How can I deserve any of it?”
My brows lift in surprise as I grasp on to the only shocking thing he’s said. “You want a family?”
Little drops of water bounce off of his broad shoulders and into my face, but I stare at him unblinking.
With all that he and Selene have loss on the kid front, I’d resigned myself to a reality where I got to have them and only them.
I never allowed myself to picture kids, to envision bedtime routines and hectic schedules due to extracurricular activities.
It would be enough for me, life with just Selene and Beck, but the thought of more than that makes my chest warm with hope I force myself to get a hold of because even if Beck and I agree we want children, we don’t know if Selene does.
A huff made of frustration and amusement sends Beck’s breath skating over my cheeks. His shoulders sag as he shakes his head like he can’t believe I’m asking him that question in a moment like this.
“I want everything with you and Selene, Cal. You know this.”
I take his face in my hands, transferring remnants of soap bubbles from my hands to the thick hairs of his beard. “I do know that. I just didn’t think kids were on the table.”
“That’s part of everything, is it not?”
“Someone’s feeling better,” I muse and then say, “Yes, I suppose kids is a part of everything.”
He brings his hand up, fingers tracing the smile on my lips. “Don’t get too excited. We’d have to talk about it with Selene first, and that can only happen after we get her away from Aubrey.”
“I know.”
And I do. There are so many obstacles ahead of us, but there’s goodness too.
All of it waiting on the other side of the nightmares and guilty consciences and husbands who refuse to let go even when they don’t want or appreciate what’s trapped in their grasp.
At the moment, I can’t do anything about Aubrey.
I haven’t found a solution that allows us to have Selene and keeps him from making good on his threat to have her killed.
The speculation surrounding Sutton’s sudden death has left me feeling even more helpless on that front.
As usual, everything about Selene seems to be operating outside my circle of control, but tonight I’ve found a way to soothe our partner.
Thanks to Beck’s candidness, I finally feel confident in my ability to comfort him, to soothe the part of him that’s slowly being smothered by a weight that only becomes bearable if someone else steps in and lifts it off your chest.
Beck reaches around me, grabbing the body wash and the same washcloth I used on him to start washing me. I always allow him to return the favor even though the showers are never for me, so he looks confused when my fingers wrap around his wrist, stilling him.
Our eyes lock, and I drop the mask, laying my heart and my hate bare for him.
“I wanted her dead too,” I tell him. “And if it had been me instead of you, she would still be rotting away in a hole in the ground.” His eyes stretch wide, but his gaze is soft with relief. “If you’re a monster, Beckham, then I am too.”