Page 83 of Vigilante Twink and the Cop

Lennox is not young. The lines around his eyes, the gray coming in at his temples that I’ve always thought was so distinguished. None of that matters right now, because whatever’s left in him after a career like his, comes out all at once, brutal and precise, a man who has spent his whole career learning, from dealing with the aftermath, exactly where to hit another man to make him stop.

Dave fights ugly, fights like someone with nothing left to lose, a fist that catches Lennox across the jaw and snaps his head sideways, a knee that finds his ribs and doubles him half over, and I’m screaming something, I don’t even know what, useless noise from a useless corner of the room while the two of them turn the small space into wreckage.

I stop being useless.

I work the rope harder, ignoring the numb burn of it, ignoring everything except the small progress I’ve been building for an hour, and the knot finally gives all at once, so suddenly I nearly fall forward off the pipe I’ve been tied to. My hands are clumsy and half dead, and I don’t care. I get to my feet on legs that don’t want to hold me and I look for anything, anything at all, a length of pipe, a brick, something that isn’t nothing.

That’s when I see the knife.

It comes up from low, from Dave’s other hand, the one Lennox hasn’t been watching because he’s too busy absorbing everything the first hand is doing, and I open my mouth and the warning comes out half a second too late to matter. Lennox twists at the last possible moment, enough that it doesn’t go where it was aimed, but not enough, and I watch his whole body change shape around it, a single sharp inhale through his teeth, his free hand going to his own side on instinct before the rest of him has caught up to what just happened to it.

He still wins.

I don’t know how. I don’t know what it costs him to keep his feet, to get his hand around Dave’s wrist and force it wide and down and put him on the ground hard enough that Dave’s head smacks against the concrete and he doesn’t get up again, but Lennox does it, breathing like something’s tearing inside his chest, and then it’s just the two of us and the dark and the sound of that ragged breathing, which is the worst sound I have ever heard in my life.

I get to him before he hits the floor.

I don’t remember crossing the room. I just know that suddenly I’m on my knees with his weight against me, heavier than I expect, all of him folding into me at once, his hand pressed hard to his side, blood already warm and slick between his fingers, more of it than I want to look at directly. I get my own hand over his, pressing down, and I’m saying his name over and over like it’s the only word I have left, which it might be.

“I’m fine,” he says, which is a lie, the first outright lie I’ve ever heard him tell.

“You’re not fine, you’re bleeding, don’t you dare,” I say, and my voice is doing something I have no control over, cracking wide open on every other word, “don’t you dare do this to me, don’t you dare.”

He looks up at me. Even now, even like this, gray and unsteady and losing more blood by the second, there’s something almost amused in his face, exhausted and amused and entirely, achingly mine.

“I came to get you,” he says, like that explains everything, like it’s the only fact in the world that matters right now.

“I know.” My hand is shaking under his, and I hold it there anyway, both of us keeping each other whole with nothing but pressure and stubbornness. “I knew you would.”

He grins up at me. Weak and faltering, but it’s there.

Frantically I keep babbling, anything to keep him here. “You came into my life and never once left again, not really, not even when I gave you every reason to.”

I can hear the sirens starting somewhere far off, small and distant, not fast enough, never fast enough. “I love you. I’ve loved you since the first night we spent together. I loved you before I had the first idea what to call it. I loved you when you turned your hand over on my sofa and didn’t say anything, because you didn’t have to, because I already knew.”

I draw in a shaky breath. “I’m so sorry it started as a lie, but it hasn’t been a lie for a long time. I love you. I really love you. I love you, Lennox, please, please stay awake, please don’t you dare leave me now that I’ve finally said it.”

Something moves through his face that has nothing exhausted in it at all, something that pushes straight through the pain and the blood loss and lands somewhere I can actually see.

“I love you too,” he says, quiet, certain, the words coming out like they’ve been sitting in him for weeks, folded and ready, waiting for a moment honest enough to finally hold them. “I’ve loved you for longer than I’ve been willing to admit, even to myself. I loved you in an alley with my torch in your face and I loved you making eggs I didn’t deserve and I loved you every single morning I had to leave before I was ready to let you go.” His hand tightens weakly under mine, and it’s the smallest gesture and it undoes me completely. “I should have said it last night. I had the words. I just didn’t trust myself to say them out loud and mean them as much as I do.”

“You’re saying it now.”

“I’m saying it now,” he agrees, and his eyes are struggling to stay open, fighting to hold mine, and I lean down and press my forehead to his, careless of the blood, careless of anything except the warmth still coming off him, still there, still his. His mouth finds mine, clumsy and slow and utterly without hurry, like he has all the time left in the world instead of maybe none of it, and I kiss him back like I can hold him together with that too, like it’s one more thing my hands can do for him besides the wound.

“Stay,” I whisper against his mouth. “Stay with me.”

“Always meant to,” he murmurs, barely audible now, his voice fraying at the edges. “Just took me a while to say so.”

The sirens are close now, blue light starting to climb the far wall through the broken window, the same window, the same building, the whole ugly shape of everything folding back in on itself and closing into something that finally, finally looks like it might end differently. I hold onto him with both hands and everything I have, and I don’t let go, not for one single second, not until strangers in uniforms are pulling me gently away and telling me he’s going to be alright, not until long after that.

Chapter thirty-nine

Lennox

Iwake up slowly, which is not how I’m used to waking up.

There’s a particular quality to hospital light, flat and constant, that makes it impossible to tell how much time has passed, and for a while I just lie still and let my body report back to me one piece at a time. My side aches in a way that’s duller than it should be, which means someone’s given me something good for it. My mouth is dry. There’s a cannula taped to the back of my hand and a monitor somewhere behind my head making a sound I’ve heard in a hundred other rooms just like this one, except this time it’s keeping time with my own heart instead of someone else’s.