Page 75 of The Beast
I had dried blood on my cheek. I had known this since the vehicle, since understanding whose hands had been on my face. I had left it there because addressing it had been a task too large for where I was. Now, I looked at it and thought about Daniel and pressed my lips together hard for three seconds.
Then, I stepped into the shower.
Brock undressed and stepped in behind me.
The water was very hot and very good. I stood under it and he stood behind me and he washed my hair—both hands, careful, working through it with the same focused attention he brought to everything. I stood with my eyes closed and felt myself begin, incrementally, to come back into my body. Not all the way. But closer.
He washed the blood from my face himself. I kept my eyes closed for that part. He was very gentle.
When we were both washed clean, he turned the water off and wrapped me in a towel that had clearly been laundered bysomeone who took laundering seriously. He dried my hair and found a robe in the wardrobe that fit and helped me into it. The entire time, he said almost nothing, which was exactly right, which was so exactly Brock.
He found clothes for himself—a shirt that fit, jeans—and came to sit on the edge of the bed where I'd settled, and he looked at me in the particular way he had.
"I'm going to talk to Tommy," he said. "Here at Dominion Hall. I won't go anywhere else tonight—I'll be close and I'll hear you if you need me." He paused. "You're safe here. These walls are—" He shook his head slightly, something wry in it. "These walls are about as safe as walls get. Nobody's getting in here."
"I know," I said. And did. The quiet of the house was the quiet of a very defended place.
"Okay." He looked at me for another moment. "Try to sleep."
"Stay," I said.
He looked at me.
"Just—" I moved back on the bed, toward the far side. "Stay until I'm asleep. Then, go talk to your brother."
He sat with it for a moment. Then, he came around and lay down beside me. I curled toward him and he put his arm around me, and the room was very quiet.
I thought about Daniel.
I thought about his face in the car, the road, the three backup copies of a pub name. I thought about what kind of bravery it was to cover someone with your body without a moment of hesitation, someone who had left you at the altar the day before. I thought that there was a kind of love that didn't ask anything in return for itself, that gave without keeping score, and Daniel had had it. I had not fully understood how rare it was until I was lying in a room full of gold light in an enormous house called Dominion Hall trying to understand why I was alive.
I'm sorry, I thought.I am so sorry. You deserved all of it. The yard and the Sundays and someone who could be fully present. You deserved everything.
I felt Brock's arm tighten slightly, the involuntary response of a body to another body's grief. I turned my face against his chest and breathed.
After a while, I became aware that I was not falling asleep. I was aware of him—of the length of him beside me, the warmth, the heartbeat under my ear that had gone slow and steady and was the most grounding sound available. I was aware of his hand on my back, not moving, just there.
I lifted my head.
He was looking at the ceiling with the expression of a man thinking about many things and choosing none of them.
"Brock," I said.
He looked at me.
I kissed him.
Not urgently—nothing like the morning, nothing like desperation. Slowly, intentionally, the way you did something when you had decided to do it and were not pretending otherwise. He received it for a moment, still, and then he kissed me back in the same register—slow, deliberate, with his hand coming up to my face the way it always came to my face.
"You don't have to—" he started.
"I know," I said. "I want to."
I wanted to feel alive.
He looked at me in the low light. "It's been a bad day."
"It has," I agreed. "And you're the best thing in it."
