Chapter 14 #2
He looks at me. "How can you do that?" he asks. Not really a question. "How can you put it down?"
"Because we're both tired, and tomorrow's coming whether we worry about it tonight or not.
My mother spent thirty years in a house with three men who run a club, and I learned how to do this from her before I could spell my own name.
You handle the thing in front of you and you let tomorrow be tomorrow. For now, you sleep."
He looks at me a moment longer. Then his eyes close. "Your mother and your fathers taught you well," he murmurs.
"They did."
"Te amo, mi vida."
"Te amo, Emiliano."
He's asleep before his next breath finishes.
He's been asleep for maybe twenty minutes when his phone vibrates on the nightstand.
I don't move at first. I let it vibrate.
I figure it's the club or Amara or somebody who can wait until he's slept more than fifteen minutes since God knows when this morning.
Then I see the screen.
Wren.
I lie there with my arm across his chest and I think about it.
If she's calling now, she has a reason.
If I let it ring out, she may not call again.
He'll sleep again. He won't always get this call.
I reach for his shoulder. I shake him gently. "Emiliano."
His eyes open. The change is fast and total. He was asleep, and now he's not, and his hand has already gone for the dresser where the Sig is.
"It's Wren," I tell him. "She's calling."
He stops, stares at the phone and takes it from me.
He sits up and swipes to answer. "Wren."
I can hear her voice on the other end but not the words.
I can tell from his face she's the one talking first. He listens.
His shoulders are very still.
"Okay," he says. "Yeah. I'm here."
She talks more. He listens. "Are you safe right now?"
She answers.
"Has anyone else come around?"
She answers.
He closes his eyes. I see his throat work.
"Hatchet's not coming back. I can promise you that."
I hold my breath. I don't know if she knows. I don't know what he's about to say.
He doesn't say it. He doesn't tell her he killed their father.
"I know I'm not the brother you wanted me to be," he says, quietly. "I'm here if you ever need me. This number's always mine."
She talks. He listens for a long time. His free hand has found mine on the bed and his thumb is moving over my knuckles, slow, automatic.
"Yeah," he says finally. "Take your time, I'm not going anywhere."
Another pause.
"Okay."
He hangs up.
He sits there with the phone in his hand. He doesn't move for a long minute.
His shoulders are doing something I can read but he probably can't feel yet.
The weight has moved. Some of it is gone. Some of it is just somewhere else now.
Then he says, "She wants to think about whether she wants to talk again. She'll call when she's ready."
"Okay."
"She didn't ask."
"I figured."
"She knows something happened. She doesn't want to know yet, and I don't want to tell her yet."
"That's okay too. You don't have to do all of it today."
He nods.
He sets the phone face-down on the nightstand. He pulls me back down to him. His arm comes around my shoulders and he tucks his chin over the top of my head.
"Gracias, mi vida."
"Siempre."
He doesn't speak again.
After a while, his breathing goes long and slow, and I know he's gone. I lie there with my ear over his heart for a long time before I move.
I wait until I'm sure he's deep enough that he won't wake when I finally do.
Then I slip out from under his arm. I find one of his t-shirts on the chair and pull it over my head. I leave the shower cap on the bathroom counter for tomorrow.
I head downstairs barefoot.
The clubhouse at midday is the quietest I've ever heard it.
The brothers are off their feet, like Amara said.
The kitchen window's open.
The breeze is hot and smells like the desert and the gardenia by the gate.
Lashes is at the kitchen table with her hands wrapped around a mug of mint tea.
She's bigger than she was last week. The pregnancy is showing in the way her hand keeps drifting to her stomach like she's checking on someone. She's in one of Brick's hoodies even though it's too warm for it. Her hair is loose. She looks up when I come in.
"You okay?" she asks me.
"Yeah."
"He okay?"
"I guess. He’s sleeping."
"Good."
She watches me put the kettle on for myself. She doesn't push. We've gotten to the part of the friendship where push isn't necessary.
I sit across from her at the table.
She slides her tea toward me without saying anything.
I take a sip. Mint and honey.
Something Ruby does to her teas that I haven't figured out yet.
"Nova?"
"Yeah."
"She moved last night."
I look up. "The baby?"
Lashes nods. She's smiling, and the smile is one I've only seen on her in pieces, a flicker at Sunday dinner, a corner of it when Mei said something funny. Never the whole face.
"For real this time. Not flutters. Actual kicks." Her hand presses against her belly. "I couldn't sleep because I kept waiting to feel it again."
"Lashes!"
"I know."
"That's so good."
"I know." Her eyes are wet. "I decided."
She doesn't have to tell me what she decided.
"I'm keeping her," she says anyway. "I wasn’t sure about it before, but I am now."
I get up and go around the table, sit beside her, and put my arms around her shoulders.
She lets me. She rests her head against mine for a second. "I want you there," she says. "When she comes. I want you in the room."
"Okay, I’ll be there."
"You don't have to—"
"Lashes, I’ll fucking be there."
She breathes out slowly. The hand that's been on her belly tightens. She holds it there a long second.
Then she puts it on top of mine.
We sit like that for a while.
Mei comes in eventually.
She gives us a long look, takes in the scene, and pours herself coffee in silence.
She drops a kiss on the top of Lashes's head on her way out without saying a word. Lashes smiles at me when she's gone.
"She's getting better," Lashes says.
"She is."
"Hope's going to have aunties."
"She is."
I squeeze her shoulder and take my mug with me when I get up.
I’m back upstairs within the hour.
Doom is on his back, one arm across his eyes, the other thrown out across the mattress like he's been reaching for me in his sleep.
His chest is rising and falling slow. I stand in the doorway for a second to watch him.
This time yesterday morning, I was in this bed at five-thirty asleep on my stomach with my hand reaching across an empty sheet to find him.
This morning I woke up alone with a flashcard against the lamp and three words in his handwriting.
I'm not sleeping alone tonight.
I cross the room. I shed the t-shirt and climb in beside him. His arm comes back around me before he wakes, the muscle memory of forty-eight hours of having me in his bed already faster than his conscious mind. He pulls me to his chest. He doesn't open his eyes.
"You good?" he murmurs.
"I'm good."
"Lashes?"
"She's good too. I'll tell you when you're awake."
"Mm."
He's almost asleep again already.
I press my palm flat over the center of his chest. The chain isn't there. It's still on the lamp. There's nothing between my hand and his skin now. His heart is steady under my palm.
His hand covers mine.
"Te amo, mi vida."
"Te amo, Emiliano."
I close my eyes and hope sleep takes me too.