Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Nova
Amara comes out of the clubhouse just as Doom starts to scan the courtyard again.
I can feel him doing it through where my hand still rests at his side, the way he's tracking the bikes like he's still standing in a safe house and the perimeter hasn't been cleared.
His pulse is too fast under my fingers.
He doesn't say anything.
He hasn't said anything since "It's done" five minutes ago.
"Clean up and rest." Amara's voice is authoritative. "Cleanup crew has the rest. I want every man in this compound off his feet by noon."
She looks at me when she gets to where we're standing.
Her eyes do a quick read of Doom, then come back to me, and she nods once. "Take him upstairs."
It's not a suggestion. "Yes, Prez."
She tips her chin and moves past us toward Python, already calling for the debrief.
The brothers start dispersing.
Compass heads to the gate.
Brick goes for the kitchen with Ramiro behind him, both of them giving Doom a wide path without making it obvious.
Razor pauses on his way past us.
He doesn't say anything.
He just puts his hand on Doom's shoulder for a second, the brief contact of a brother who knows. Then he keeps walking.
Doom's pulse settles half a beat under my fingers.
I take his hand. The dried blood between his knuckles catches against my palm.
He follows me. We walk through the kitchen, where Ruby and Kelsey are in the kitchen with Xiomara and Itzel making some sort of dessert.
Kelsey is shooting me a look I don't have words for.
Almost like she’s worried but not scared. A look only a woman who's done this before can give. I nod at her, and she nods back.
Then we're on the stairs.
Doom doesn't speak when we get into his room.
He stands in the middle of the floor while I close the door behind us, and he stays where he is.
I can see his hands now better in this light.
The blood is dried brown on his right knuckles, and there's more on the inside of his left wrist where it ran down the cuff of his t-shirt before he could roll it up.
His shirt has a spatter pattern across the chest. The black hides most of it, but I can still see it.
I take a slow breath and put my hand flat against his chest, the way I did in the courtyard.
"I'm going to take this off you," I tell him. "Tell me if anything hurts."
He nods.
"And Emiliano. Tell me what you need from me right now. Anything."
He looks at me for a long moment.
"Quédate," he says. His voice is rough from twelve hours of barely using it. Stay.
"No me voy a ninguna parte."
I undress him slowly.
The cut comes off first.
I fold it and set it on the dresser.
The Sig goes next, ejected magazine, chamber checked, the way Dad taught me to handle a weapon in a clubhouse.
The chain at his neck I leave for last because I don't want it on the dresser.
I lift it over his head and hang it on the lamp where the light catches it.
His t-shirt is the hardest part. I have to peel it up over his ribs, and when it comes up past his collarbone, I can see what he's been carrying under it.
His right shoulder is purple-gray where he got hurt somehow. I wonder if he even noticed it.
I’ve heard stories from my fathers’ about how in the moment they can be when they’re on a run like that.
Daddy got shot in the shoulder one time at a run in Vegas and didn’t notice until Sakura was screaming at him to sit the fuck down.
There's a deep bruise on his left forearm from blocking and a long scratch across his chest I don't have a story for.
I clock all of it without saying anything.
Nursing rule from second-semester clinicals: name what you see when you have to name it, and keep your face flat when you don't.
He doesn't need me reacting to him right now. He needs me reading him.
I unfasten his belt and his jeans.
He helps me with those, just barely, the smallest shift of weight.
Boxers come down. I hang everything over the chair by the dresser so I can deal with the clothes later.
Then I reach into my overnight bag and pull out a waterproof cap I picked up at the salon last week.
I hand it to him.
"For your curls. So we don't have to do the whole thing tonight."
He takes it. He looks at it for a second. Then his face does something I haven't seen on him today.
"You bought this for me?"
"I figured I'd be staying enough that it'd come up eventually. Just hadn't said it out loud."
He doesn't answer.
He turns it over once in his hand, careful, and lifts it to his head.
He tucks his curls in the way he's clearly done a thousand times before.
His mother's hands must’ve taught him this when he was small.
I watch him do it. Something inside me that's been wound tight since I came down the stairs at five-thirty this morning loosens half a turn.
I take his hand and lead him to the bathroom.
The communal shower at the clubhouse is bigger than the one at my apartment.
I run the water hot. I check it with my wrist the way I check bathwater for clinicals, then I take Doom's hand and pull him in with me.
He stands under the spray with his head tilted back.
I watch him for one more second to make sure he's steady, then I get to work.
I start with his hands.
I pick up the washcloth and the soap and I lift his right hand and turn it over in mine.
The blood between his knuckles softens and starts to come away.
I work it out with my thumb. Slowly. The water at our feet runs pink for a few seconds and then it goes clear again.
He doesn't say anything.
I do the other hand. Knuckles. Wrist. Under his nails where the blood has gone darker and won't move without me digging.
I dig. He doesn't pull away. He doesn't watch what I'm doing either. His eyes are closed.
I move up. His forearms next, working around the bruise where he must've blocked something.
His biceps and the tattoos on his right shoulder, the ink darker with the water.
His chest, the scratch across his sternum.
It's shallow. Doesn't need anything tonight except clean and dry. I can do it tomorrow if it gets red.
I turn him under the water and start on his back.
His back is where I find the rest of him.
He has a long bruise across his right shoulder blade I can only see from behind, in the wet light, with the water running down his spine.
He must have hit a wall or a doorframe on the way down with someone. I touch it. He flinches, barely. He doesn't say anything.
"You hit something here," I tell him.
"Sí."
I don't make it a thing. I keep washing.
I get to the back of his neck where the chain sat all morning, and that's when I feel it.
His shoulders shake once.
Not from cold. Not from pain.
I put down the washcloth.
I put my arms around him from behind, my hands flat against his stomach, my forehead between his shoulder blades, and I hold him there under the water.
He breaks.
It isn't a sound at first.
It's a tremor that runs through his back and into mine where I'm pressed against him.
Then his hands come up to cover mine where they're crossed over his stomach.
Then the sound finally comes, raw and pulled from his throat, the sound of a man who's been holding something for years and doesn't have anywhere else to put it.
He sobs.
Real sobs.
The water hides most of it, the way water does.
But I can feel his ribs moving against my arms.
I can hear the catch in his breath.
I can feel the wet on the backs of my hands that isn't from the shower, because his face has come down and he's pressing his cheek to my knuckles.
I don't shush him. I don't tell him it's okay, because it isn't.
I just stand behind him with my arms around his middle and let him cry his father out.
It takes a few minutes. I don't count them. The water keeps running.
Eventually his hands tighten over mine, his ribs settle, and his breathing evens out. He hasn't moved otherwise. He's let me hold him the whole way through.
After a long time, he speaks. His voice is wrecked.
"Lo siento."
"For what?"
"For this. For what you're seeing."
"Emiliano." I press my forehead harder between his shoulder blades. "I want to see this. This is the part of you I get."
He doesn't answer. But his hands stay over mine.
I let us stay there a little longer. Then I pick up the washcloth again and finish what I started.
The back of his thighs. The backs of his calves. His feet. I turn him under the water and rinse him clean.
When I'm done, I shut off the shower.
I towel him dry the same way I washed him, careful and unhurried. His face is still wet when I bring the towel to it. Not from the water now. From the rest of it.
His eyes are red. The skin around them is swollen. He doesn't try to hide any of it.
He lets me press the cotton to his cheeks and what crying does to him.
I lead him out of the bathroom.
The bed in our room is rumpled from where I didn't fix it.
I pull the comforter back.
He pulls the cap off and sets it on the nightstand.
I get him into bed first, pull the blanket up to his waist, and tuck it the way my mom used to tuck me when I was sick, two corners of the sheet folded over the comforter at the top so it stays flat.
He watches me do it with eyes that have gone soft and exhausted. I get in beside him.
He turns onto his side and pulls me into his chest the way he did last night.
His arm comes around my back, his hand finding the dip of my waist.
I tuck my forehead under his jaw.
We lie there for a long time.
The room has the gray quality of mid-morning behind closed curtains, the bikes and voices in the courtyard far enough away to sound like weather.
The compound's settling. Brothers off their feet, the way Amara wanted.
He breathes against the top of my head.
After a while, he says, "Nova."
"Mm."
"My father might be gone. But his club won't take kindly to us killing him. They're going to want payback."
I lift my head enough to look at him. "I know."
"It's not over."
"I know that too."
"I just—"
"It's a different worry for another day, Emiliano."