8. Blue #4
Where the fear came from, I didn’t know. My fear of being lost in the dark made no sense. Part of me knew this. The part that didn’t hustle me forward, where I bumped into the edge of the mattress and half fell on it. I swiped at the hot tears on my face with a shaking hand.
“Please, can I sleep with you?” I begged.
Shame rippled across my skin, forcing memories upward, as though they’d been dragged on a sled across ice.
Of me, kneeling, head bowed. Hands on my knees, drenched through, shivering in the mold-laced semi-darkness of Cellar. Please stop. Please stop. Please.
Begging had brought me nothing but another bucket of water over my head, and yet I’d not stopped.
“Please.” I swallowed hard. “Please.”
He could not have known what was going on inside me.
I barely understood it myself. I would have raced across the emptiest of lands to get away from it: the tumble of pain and shredded innocence, the idea that the world had once been a good place but was no longer.
It had ceased to be a long time ago, eons ago, and I’d soon come to understand that mercy was not for me.
And yet. Here I was, kneeling at Wolfe’s bedside, clawed fingers clutching at the bedclothes, my head hammering with an ache that came from deep inside. My heart clamped in a vice that he would refuse me and send me on my way alone. And yet he did not.
“Hey.” Wolfe’s voice came, a sharp-edged sound to cut through the darkness and the tumble of memories in my head that I could not find my way through. “Sure,” he said. “Sure.” He paused, and in the softest of voices, said, “Please don’t cry. It’s going to be okay.”
Not knowing whether or not I believed him, I crawled onto the bed before he could change his mind.
His body was warm against the silence of night, and his arms went around me, like doors barring the way between me and everything scary.
Fear could pound at those doors, but as long as he held me, I would be safe.
Maybe he shifted, about to push me away, then he stilled. His hands were on my wrists, clasped behind his neck. “Blue, if you let me breathe, I’ll let you stay.”
I was choking him. I let go a little and let him release me, glad that he didn’t move away, but only slid back into bed, his head resting on his pillow. His eyes reflected the starlight as he seemed to be urging me to do the same.
“Put your head on the pillow,” he said. “And just breathe.”
“It’s so quiet,” I said, gulping over the words. “There’s no wind.”
“I know,” he said, though he couldn’t possibly.
I heard him take a breath and then pause.
“After the wind of a blizzard dies down,” he said.
“It’s like it leaves ghosts behind. Silent floating ghosts.
” He laughed a bit, and I sensed him turn his head to look at me, starlight in his eyes, shadows around the shape of his head.
“I’ve never been one for fanciful talk, yet here I am. ”
“Do you think it’s ghosts?” I asked, fully letting go of him, rolling toward him, tucking myself along the line of his body. He didn’t push me away, for which I was eternally grateful. “Of people? People who died in the blizzard?”
“Of ideas,” he said. “I came to Montana with an idea that has yet to die, so I guess I’m pretty lucky.”
“What idea?” I asked, falling into the even cadence of his voice, the steady tone, the way he breathed in and out so evenly, as though he wasn’t scared and never had been.
“Working with my hands,” he said. “Fending for myself.” Under his breath he added, “Nobody telling me what to do.”
If I held my head in just the right way, I could see his profile limned in starlight, faintly white and blue, darker blue where his hair began.
“That sounds nice,” I said, and meant it, though I didn’t have a single clue as to whether I had worked with my hands.
Though I did wonder where those gloves had gone, fine wool, half-fingered.
A Christmas present given with hands and whole hearts.
“I shouldn’t have sat on your desk like that,” I said.
“It’s okay,” he said. My arm slid across his chest, and he brought up his hand. For a second, I thought he was going to push me away, but instead he traced the line of my forearm with a soft thumb. He cleared his throat and said, “Nobody else has been in there before you.”
“It’s cozy,” I said, not adding anything about it being the heart of him, his sanctum sanctorum. And since when did I know any Latin? “Thank you for finding me in the snow. For taking me in. If not for you, I’d be—” I paused. “Dead.”
“That you would,” he said, and a crack appeared in his voice. “That was a crazy storm. Even in these parts, it was unusual for October.” He patted my forearm with his whole hand and said, “Sleep now. Or at least try.”
I knew I was the world’s most exhausting guest, taking up space, and time, and energy. Not to mention food.
If there was any way to repay the favor, I would.
For now, I closed my eyes and relished the weight of his hand, the warmth of his body in the soft bed.
The clean sheets. The pillow. His scent in the dark.
And beyond that, in the silence, I imagined how the starlight must be glittering across the waves and waves of white snow.