Page 14 of Angel’s Doll

My hands give me away in the hallway.

All night they behaved. Folded on the table, steady around a mug I never drank from, flat and calm while I handed those dangerous men my whole life in order. Now they’ve started to shake, a fine tremor climbing my wrists, headed for the rest of me.

Angel comes up one step behind. Close enough to catch me, far enough not to crowd me. He doesn’t take my elbow. He doesn’t tell me I did well, he doesn’t ask one more question. Praise I could deflect. Questions I could answer. I have no defense built for a man who simply walks me home in silence and lets me shake.

At my door he stops, hands loose at his sides.

“Get some sleep, Doll.” He’s already turning. “Prospect’s down the hall all night. Nobody comes up.”

He gave me his helmet, his flannel and a phone I was allowed to put down. All day he’s handed me choices and never once told me what to want. So there’s no reason the next word should cost what it costs. It comes up my throat with ten years of training hanging off it, every lesson about not needing, not wanting, not taking up one inch more than I’m given.

“Stay.”

He stops and turns. Whatever he’s looking for in my face, I let him see all of it, because I have nothing left to hold the curtain with.

“Door open or shut?” he says.

Not why.

Not are you sure.

Terms.

“Shut.”

“Lights?”

“The lamp.” I want the dark even less than I want to be alone, and I’m done pretending otherwise.

“Chair, floor, or next to you?”

“Next to me.”

He nods once, like I’ve given him coordinates, and comes back down the hall. At the threshold I step aside and let him in.

The latch clicks and the bill for the whole day comes due.

The shaking arrives whole, teeth first. Cold pours up from under my sternum, absurd in a warm room, and my knees go loose and stupid. I get one arm out toward the dresser and his hands are already there, steering me down to sit on the edge of the bed, unhurried, sure.

“Adrenaline,” he says. He pulls the blanket off the bed one-handed and wraps it around my shoulders, then crouches so we’re level. “It waits until you’re safe. Let it run.”

“I’m not scared.” My teeth chatter on it, which rather undercuts the delivery.

“I know. This is the part after scared.” He tucks the blanket closed under my chin, and his knuckles rest at my collarbone a second longer than the job requires. “You held it all day, Doll. It’s allowed to leave.”

So I let it. I sit in a stranger’s blanket in a biker clubhouse and shake like a struck bell while the most dangerous man I’ve ever met kneels on the floor, watching me come apart without once looking away.

He doesn’t tell me I’m okay. He doesn’t fold me into his chest and make it about his arms. He stays exactly where I can see him and waits it out with me. It’s the most intimate thing anyone has offered me in years.

The tremor runs itself down to my hands, then to nothing. My breathing evens. The lamp hums.

His split lip has dried to a dark seam, and it’s been in the corner of my eye all day.

“You never iced that.” I pull one arm free of the blanket and reach, then stop, my fingers an inch from his jaw. He goes very still. He did this in the alley, over the dumpster, a big man making himself a fixed point so the scared thing could decide. It’s my turn to be decided about. I close the inch and lay my thumb along the edge of the cut, soft as I know how.

He lets me. His breath changes, one slow pull through his nose, and that’s all he lets show.

“You bled for me before you knew my name,” I say. “And you haven’t mentioned it once.”