88. Deacon
Chapter 88
Deacon
She stirs just a little before dawn.
Just after midnight, shivers racked her body from the cold, so I draped my jacket over her.
She’s so small wrapped up in the leather and Kevlar. It doesn’t suit her. Black just isn’t meant for someone with so much life in them. Even now, on the gradual incline away from being half dead, there’s too much life in Henri for her to wear black.
“Deacon?” She calls for me before her eyes flutter open.
“I’m here, Hen,” I answer, squeezing her hand. I haven’t been able to force myself to let go.
Her eyes blink once, not truly seeing, and then promptly close again. She drifts off to sleep.
She whimpers again, pulling me away from my phone.
“It’s okay. I’m here, Hen.” The sound of my voice soothes her, and she goes back to her soft slumber. But barely thirty seconds later, she’s restless again.
I open the reading app on my phone and flip through a few books. I look for an option that suits her, but I don’t know if she likes to reread books she’s already read, and that’s all I’ve downloaded lately in trying to catch up to what sort of literature she likes... I’d hate to start reading her something she hasn’t read and spoil it.
Laughing at myself, I open what I had been reading to talk with Ezra about at the next family gathering: Shakespearean sonnets, and at what point is it loving sonnets or your inability to love any one person?
“‘What is your substance, whereof are you made, that millions of strange shadows on you tend?’”
Henri calms down again, and her peaceful breathing resumes.
I continue picking my way through the lines.
I finish the page and go to flip it to the next one when I hear her small voice. “It figures you’re a Shakespeare fan.”