Page 101 of Caterina
“I know.”
Her fingers twist together in her lap. “I should have listened to you.”
“You didn’t have time to understand what was happening.”
“But you did.”
“That’s my job.”
She opens her eyes again, and the look she gives me is too full of things I do not want to talk about in this room, in this dark, with her sitting on the edge of my bed wearing sleep clothes.
“I thought you were crazy,” she whispers.
That should probably offend me.
“I know.”
Her head snaps up. “You know?”
“You looked at me like I’d lost my mind until the door took the first hit.”
A breath leaves her, shaky and ashamed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I lean my head back against the pillow and stare at the dim ceiling instead of her face. “You saw a fight. I saw a pattern. Different training. Different information.”
“Still,” she insists, her soft, insistent, "If I had listened, we might have avoided it all. You wouldn't have been—"
“We might have avoided it,” I cut in, my voice flat. “Or the third shooter might have been lying in wait around the corner. Or you might have gone down with the first push and gotten trampled. Or he might have gone for the gun at that moment instead of waiting for a clearer shot.” I finally look at her again. “There is no ‘if’ that gets us to a perfect version of tonight.”
Her expression falters. The anger at herself, the guilt, it all flickers and then dims, replaced by the hard reality of what I’m saying.
She was there. She survived. That’s the only version of the story that matters now.
For a few seconds, she says nothing.
She just looks at me.
Not at the bandage. Not at the water glass. Not at the door, or the window, or any of the other things she has been using to keep from looking directly at what happened tonight.
At me.
The silence changes, grows heavier.
I feel it immediately, and every professional instinct I have starts to harden against it.
“Caterina,” I say quietly.
I mean it as a warning.
I think she hears it that way.
It doesn’t stop her.
She shifts closer, one hand landing carefully on the mattress beside my hip, nowhere near the wound. Her face is pale in the dark, her eyes too bright, her mouth soft and tense at the same time.
“I keep seeing the blood,” she whispers.
“I know.”
