Chapter 15 Drew #3
He said: "Cora. I am counting. The count is high because I am here. The count is high because I have been counting for nine nights and tonight you turned. The count is the count. The count is going to be high. I am okay with the count being high."
I laughed.
I had not laughed in nine days. The laugh was a small one. The laugh was a thing.
He smiled.
He had not smiled in seven days. The smile was the smile from the gap. The smile from the post-Hess moment. The smile that had been the ours.
I kissed the smile.
We slowed everything.
We took an hour. Maybe two. The truck cab held us.
The starlight held the count of seven. The Mojave high desert at night was a quiet that did not have any human sound except the slow steady cooling-tick of the truck engine and the small soft sound of two people figuring out what to do with each other when one of them had not done it in eleven years and the other one had been counting in stacks of seven to keep from feeling the absence of it for three.
The figuring out was the count.
The count was holding.
The count was the body. The count was the breath.
The count was the small careful movements of a half-Vampyren who had decided that ours was now a verb and not a verbal rule.
The count was the way I let him touch the count.
The count was the way he counted the touching as he did it.
The count was the way I taught him by being a teacher who did not say Maestra out loud but who let her body answer his questions in the way bodies answered questions when the questions were the right questions.
I counted with him.
He counted with me.
At the end, and the end was a thing the body decided, not the clock, he was against me and I was against him and his cool palm was on my heart and my warm palm was on his side where the bandage had been three days ago and the wound under the bandage was closed and the wound was.
Drew. The wound was where my blood had gone into him and the place where my blood had gone in was the place where his hand had come back out to find mine.
He said: "Cora."
"Yes."
"The count is. The count is ours."
"Yes."
"I have not had a count that was anyone else's part of mine before."
"I know."
"I have had Ellen's count. Ellen's count was the count Ellen made.
I was inside Ellen's count. The count was Ellen's.
The count was not mine in the same way. This is.
Cora. This is a count that is mine in the same way as yours.
This is a count that is ours. The two of us.
I have not. I did not. Cora, I did not know it could feel like this.
I did not know there was a feeling of this.
I have read about feelings of this in the books Ellen left me.
I have not had the feeling. I did not believe the feeling. I. Cora, I believe the feeling now."
I put my hand on his face.
I said: "Drew."
"Yes."
"Welcome to the count."
He laughed.
The laugh was a small one.
The laugh was the third laugh I had heard from Drew in nine months. The first had been at the Pampa ranger station when I had told him the book was his. The second had been on the back of the truck two days ago when I had said I love you and he had said okay. The third was tonight.
I kept count.
He kissed me again. Slow. The slow that meant we have time. The slow that meant the count is holding. The slow that meant I am not going anywhere.
After a long time we slept.
The back-cot was the back-cot. The truck cab was warm.
The Mojave starlight came through the rear window.
The seven stars were the seven stars. Drew's breath on the back of my neck was the eight-breaths-a-minute half-Vampyren breath rate.
His hand was on my stomach. My hand was on his side.
The team was holding. The count was holding.
Three days to the gate.
In the morning, Sylvia would do the post-night medical sweep.
She would notice. Sylvia noticed everything.
She would not say anything. She would do the nod she did when she had noticed something she was not going to say anything about.
I had been on the receiving end of that nod for three years.
Tomorrow I would be on the receiving end of it again, for a different reason. I would be okay with it.
Cruz would not notice. Cruz noticed tactical things, not relational things. Cruz would be on the third truck for the morning leg with his coffee and his SAW-broken-down maintenance log.
Renn would notice. Renn would do the Vampyren-formal nod at me and at Drew separately, the senior-warrior nod, the cohort acknowledgment.
Veron would notice. Veron would do the throat-line bow.
The convoy would roll out at oh-six.
Three days to the gate.
The count was holding.
Drew was asleep against my back.
I was awake. I would sleep in a minute. I was just holding the moment for another minute. The moment was the moment. The moment was a thing I had not let myself have for ten years. The moment was. Drew. The moment was the count.
I closed my eyes.
The seven stars in the rear window were the seven stars.
I slept.