Page 33 of Ruthless Sin
I do not open it.
Don’t.
She is not awake yet. If she opens her eyes and a man is standing over her she will go for the knife under her pillow. She will be right to.
I press my palm flat against the wood and wait. That is all I can do. Wait on my side of the door and let her find her own way back.
Inside, she is breathing fast and shallow, half-words that are not aimed at me.
I keep my palm on the wood and I wait.
Her breath stutters. Stutters again. Then slowly, unevenly, it evens out.
The latch clicks on her side.
She opens the door herself. First an inch, then another, then all the way, and she is standing in the gap in the slip she sleeps inwith her bare feet on the wood floor and the chain at her throat and her hair damp at the temples. Her eyes are open but not all the way back yet, pupils wide in the dark.
She sees me.
She does not flinch or step back. She lifts her left hand across the space between us, not waving, not reaching for the doorframe, just her hand, open, coming toward me.
Cristo.
I cross to her in two steps and put one arm around her shoulders and one at her back and let her step into me. That is all. I do not pull her. She comes.
Her forehead lands against my chest. Her hands close on the front of my shirt at my ribs, gripping hard, and I close my arms around her and hold on.
She is shaking. Every shake moves through me.
I keep my hands where they are. Right hand at her shoulder blades. Left at the small of her back. I do not move them and I do not speak and I stand in her doorway holding her until her breath slows against my chest and her pulse, which I can feel through the chain pressed between us, begins to settle.
The shaking stops. Her shoulders lift slightly and her grip on my shirt loosens. Not all the way. Enough.
She lifts her face off my chest and looks at my collarbone.
I lower us both slowly to the floor with our backs against the doorframe, half inside her room and half in the hallway, and she folds against my side with her cheek on my shoulder and her hands still loosely on my shirt.
I want her. She is shaking against me and I want her and tonight is not for that. I keep my right hand at her shoulder blades and my left hand away from her hair. I sit with her. I stay quiet. I let her sleep.
She falls asleep against me.
I sit through the rest of the night.
Before dawn her grip loosens completely and I lift her, three steps to the bed, and lay her down on the side she’d been on. I pull the comforter up to her shoulder and stand over her in the dark until I am sure her breath is even.
I pull her door to the inch she always leaves it and walk back to my room. I lie down on top of the covers in my clothes, the watch still on my wrist, and my ribs are still ringing, and I do not sleep.
7
MILA
The therapist closes the door behind the last woman.
Sofia is already in the hallway with her notebook. She has been writing through the back half of group, head down, the pencil moving slowly. She holds the notebook against her chest and walks ahead of me toward the lobby.
I should follow her.
I don’t.
