Page 60 of Slander
I don't get any further, because I'm out of the truck and into him, my face in his chest, egg and all.
His arms come around me so hard it's almost more than air, almost the only thing I need.
He doesn't tell me it's okay. He doesn't say one useless thing.
He just holds me up in his gravel driveway in the falling dark, one big hand cradling the back of my head, and lets me come apart against him until there's nothing left coming.
"I've got you," he says into my hair, the only words he gives me, again and again, like a nail he's driving to be sure it holds. "I've got you. I've got you."
He runs me a bath I don't ask for.
He gets the egg out of my hair himself, kneeling by the tub with a cup, pouring warm water slowly over the back of my head while I sit with my knees pulled up.
His hands in my hair are so careful, I could weep all over again from the simple animalistic relief of being touched like I'm worth being careful with.
Neither of us talk for a while. The water gets the cold out of me by degrees.
"I keep thinking I should be angrier," I say finally, watching the water. "I keep waiting to be furious. And mostly I'm just so tired, Njal. I'm so tired of having to prove I'm not a monster to people who decided I was before they ever looked."
"You don't have to prove anything to them." His hand moves slowly down the back of my neck. "Not one of them. They stopped being people whose opinion you owe the second they stood in a parking lot and watched a woman get eggs thrown at her and called it righteous."
"They've known me my whole life."
"Then they should've known better." His jaw is tight, but his hands stay gentle. "That's on them, Soph. Every bit of it. Not you."
When the water's gone cool, he wraps me in a towel and leaves me to dress, and by the time I come out, he's already got his phone in his hand, ordering a pizza, because neither of us has eaten and because the world keeps turning even when it's ending.
While we wait, he opens the refrigerator and pulls out a bottle of red.
"You don't drink," I say, watching him pull the cork.
"I'll have a glass with you." He pours two, hands me one. "I don't make a habit of it. Doesn't always sit right with the meds, and I don't love what too much of it did to people I came up around. But one glass, with you, on a night like this one—" the corner of his mouth tips "—I think I can manage."
We eat pizza on his couch with the lamps low and Hoagie sprawled across both our feet.
We drink the wine slowly, and somewhere in there the worst of the day starts to loosen its grip on me.
The wine helps. I won't pretend it doesn't.
It comes up warm under my skin and takes the sharpest edges off, and after the second glass, I'm leaning into his side,feeling almost human, my legs across his lap, his hand wrapped warm around my bare ankle.
"I bought wine once for a book club," I tell him, lifting my glass, and a laugh comes out of me that's only half wrecked. "I was going to be the teacher who hosted a wine-and-novel night. Get the young moms out of the house once a month. I had a whole list of books picked."
"Yeah?" He's watching me, his thumb moving slowly on my ankle. "What was first on it?"
"Something uplifting." The laugh again, steadier this time. "God, I'm glad I never sent the invitations. Can you imagine? Beverly Daughtry in my living room discussing themes."
His chest moves under my cheek, the nearest thing to a laugh I've gotten out of him all night, and I feel it more than hear it, and I think—lying here warm and wine-soft against a man who rode an hour with murder in his face just to be gentle with me—that this is the only place in the world that hasn't turned on me today.
I set my glass down on the floor.
I turn in his lap so I'm facing him, my hands coming up to his jaw, the stubble rough under my palms.
"Sophie." He catches my wrists, the way he does, slowing me down. "You don't have to. Not tonight. You've had the worst day of your life. I'm not going anywhere if all you do is sleep."
"I know I don't have to." I lean my forehead against his. "I want to."
And I do.
