Chapter 32 #2
It was silenced suddenly by River reaching across the small distance between us.
She lifted a hand to my face and brushed a stray strand of hair from my eyes, casually—like we’d always been close enough for that kind of contact.
I was too stunned by the small act of tenderness to pull away from her fingers when they brushed lightly along my cheek.
“The hybrids are doing better too,” she continued, her hand eventually coming to rest on the blanket between us. “Some of them have even started opening up on their own. According to Hunter, Mary even managed a smile yesterday.”
I swallowed again, staring at her hand, overcome with an urge to lace my fingers with hers.
The last time she’d done it, it felt nice.
It was comforting, feeling her long fingers interwoven with mine.
But I kept my hand where it was, firmly tucked under my chin.
“And the—” I faltered, then soldiered on, squeezing my eyes shut like that would make it easier to utter his title. “And the Doctor?”
“Dylan is inspecting his home from top to bottom,” River replied. “If there’s a lead there somewhere that can guide us to the organization’s higher-ups, she’ll find it.”
“Good.” The word rang hollow, and too many horrible memories tinted my periphery. I tried to block them out, tried to go back to feeling nothing. If I could just set those thoughts aside, bottle up all of those emotions, then I would be fine.
I stared at her fingers, itching to reach for them. Aching for comfort.
Like she could read my mind, River’s hand crept toward mine. Her fingers slid into the spaces between my own and tightened, tethering me to the here and now. Her voice was a low murmur, neither pushy nor sympathetic. “Do you want to talk about it? About… him?”
“No.” Yes…? Maybe I did. Maybe saying it out loud would make it easier to swallow. “I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you try?” River dropped her eyes to our hands, intertwined. “You can stop any time you like.”
Where would I even begin? There was too much to cover, too much I hadn’t even let myself acknowledge out loud.
Explaining all of it, every single terrible memory that haunted me to this day would require a PowerPoint presentation and about ten hours of her time—the worst delivered Ted Talk in history.
So I chose the short version, the shallow truths I could handle.
“Did you know I was a foster kid? Before… before the organization got to me.” River’s attentive eyes prompted me to continue, and I sucked in a breath before speaking again.
“I didn’t know my parents—all I knew was that I was removed from their care because of charges of neglect.
I spent the first few years of my life jumping from one foster home to another, until the organization got involved. ”
I couldn’t remember much of those early years, only a deep, ever present loneliness that haunted me to this day.
“When I was first scooped up by the facility I thought it was some kind of—I don’t know, some kind of Wonderland.
Other kids like me, nice adults and… the Doctor…
telling me I was special.” A bitter laugh scraped up my throat.
“I bought into the fairytale for exactly three days. Then the facade cracked and the experiments started. But I still held onto this idea that he was… kind. That he didn’t mean to hurt me. ”
I shut my eyes, unaware that tears were flowing until I heard them plop quietly onto the sheets. “But he was never kind. I was just seeing what I wanted to see.”
My mouth clamped shut again. That was it, that was all I could manage. Everything that came afterward—the one real source of happiness I had, ripped away from me in the blink of an eye—those memories were far too painful to speak of. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
So I skipped ahead. “After I got out, Arlon tried to make me go to therapy, anonymous meetings and all that. I tried it for a while, but… none of it worked. Hell, nobody even knew what I was talking about half the time—they all thought I was crazy, the things I was babbling about. So I just… shut down. I stopped speaking during meetings, and eventually I stopped going altogether. All it did was make me feel more alone.”
I pried my eyes open again, desperate to explain myself but simultaneously terrified to be so vulnerable.
“I get by now, by just… pushing it down. All those feelings, all those memories I can’t bear to bring up.
I push them down and I keep moving.” I heaved in a breath, picking up speed as I struggled to explain myself.
“I keep moving and I keep moving because if I don’t—if I let my guard down… all those bad feelings catch up to me.”
A sob rocked through my body then and I curled myself smaller, still clinging onto her hand, tight enough to crush her fingers had she been human. My forehead bumped her chest and River edged closer, curling her body around my own.
“I have to keep moving. It's the only way I know how to get by—it’s why I push myself too far every single time.” I hiccupped as another sob broke my words in two. “Because if I stop, even for a second… If I let myself rest—if I stop to take a breath—just once… I’ll never get up again.”
River listened like I was reciting scripture, until I had nothing left to say but this: “I feel like a failure.” I whispered the words, hot tears tracing a path down my cheeks.
“I can’t get up. I let myself relax and now I can’t get up.
I wasted a whole day, all because I failed the very first step. I couldn’t just—get up.”
Then she shook her head, and I felt the motion against mine. Her words were quiet in my ear, not chiding or stern, but gentle. “You’re not a failure, Laurie. You may not have gotten out of bed, but you still made it through the day.”
I lifted my head, scorn being my first reaction to that statement, but River lifted two fingers and pressed them over my lips before I could utter a single contrary remark. “You made it through the day,” she repeated, ochre eyes boring into mine. “That’s more than enough.”
I looked at her—really looked at her. At the gentle curve of her lips, the faint flecks of gold in her eyes. The dark circles underneath that hadn’t been there before.
The question was out of my mouth before I could register the hypocrisy in my words. “Have you been sleeping well lately? You look like you could use a break.”
River’s lips turned up at the corners and she raised a single brow. “That’s rich coming from you.”
She had a point but… I frowned, noting the fine lines of fatigue crinkling the corners of her eyes. “Answer the question.”
But River only released my hand and ruffled my hair—ruffled my hair?!
I had no time to form a scowl and slap her away, before that same hand rested gently on my cheek, cupping my face with the same kind of delicacy you’d afford to fragile porcelain. “I’m fine. You don’t have to worry about me.”
Her hand on my cheek threw me for a loop, and I couldn’t say what I wanted to say. I couldn’t tell her that I did worry. That I… cared. Deeply. More than I was supposed to.
I could only stare back at her, skin tingling where the pads of her fingers touched my face, wiping away the tears drying there. She was so close—those gleaming, golden eyes looking into mine, shining a light on every dark crevice inside my head.
I was vaguely aware of a warmth in my chest, blossoming to a fiery burn when I counted the points of contact between us.
My bent knees poking into her stomach, her hand on my cheek, the tips of our elbows.
I lifted my own hand—unsure of exactly what I intended to do with it now that I had it hovering in the air—and then placed it over hers.
Holding her hand there, on my face, wallowing in the warmth it offered.
I had no idea why I did that, but it was too late to back out.
Too late to wonder if it looked pitiful to her—my desperate yearning for contact and comfort.
I could feel myself turning red. From the tips of my ears to the column of my neck, the hot flush crept across my skin—and it was embarrassing to say the least.
But she was close, so close. And she was… “Beautiful.”
It took a beat, and then another, and then a flicker of surprise in River’s eyes for me to realize I’d said that last part aloud.
Mortification had me blushing an even deeper shade of red, and I snatched my hand away, jerking backward and rolling to the far end of the bed with frantic urgency. River’s laughter was light and teasing, muffled when I promptly shoved my head under a pillow to hide my burning shame.
But I heard her next words loud and clear—and what they did to my heart, what they ignited in my stomach—that was something I could not bear to acknowledge. Not unless I wanted to dive deep into my own psyche and explore some part of me I hadn’t even known existed until she walked into my life.
“Right back at you, Beautiful.”