Page 77 of On Dry Land
“Tell me what happened, please,” he requests.
“I did.”
His eyes flick upward to mine. “In full.”
I sigh. I don’t think there is any point in breaking down a play-by-play for him. It’s not going to make either of us feel better. In fact, I imagine it’ll just add another layer of pain to the bruises between us. Dryden has the same look in his eyes that he had when we visited Oliver to bring him dinner.
“Please, can we not,” I plead quietly.
“Okay,” he agrees, the way I knew he would. Boundaries never require much enforcing with him. One of his fingers strokes gently against my palm. “I’m concerned about this.”
“Nothing is broken. It’s fine,” I promise.
“Mm.” He makes an agreeable noise but continues probing gently. I watch his long fingers, skin dark against the pale redness of mine, and wait to feel revulsion at the sight of my mangled arm and Dryden’s pretty hands touching it. It doesn’t come. Smothered, perhaps, by the warmth of the cottage and the kitten purring once more in my lap, the steady hands and clinical touch of the man in front of me. It’s just a scar, I think, reminding myself of the words Dryden said.
Eventually, he decides nothing is immediately life-threatening and directs me to the shower. I’m handed a matching set of Dryden’s lounge clothes and left alone in the bathroom with a soft “You know where everything is.” The face in the mirror is just as horrifying as I’d feared it was—bruising underneath both eyes, a bad scrape across my cheekbone, and that damn cut on my chin that has finally started to scab. I badly want to shave.
Time catches up with me as I stand in the shower, hot water sluicing down my back and wetting my hair. Washing feels like a herculean task. It takes minutes of me watching the dirty water swirl around my feet before I reach for the soap. I think about what awaits me when I finish, and suddenly, my arms aren’t quite so heavy that they can’t function.
My clothes are in a basket next to the bathroom door when I emerge, steam curling around me through the open doorway and Dryden’s sweats blessing my skin with their softness. I reach for the basket, understanding that the intention is obviously to wash them, but Dryden stops me, catching me with an arm looped over my chest.
“I’ll do it,” he tells me. “I made you soup.”
He snags the basket and disappears into the bathroom to shove it all in the wash. There’s a bowl of soup on the kitchen counter, steam curling from the top. It smells like chicken noodle. I’m not successful in blinking back the tears this time and swipe my cheek as one trickles its way down. Soup requires no chewing and will be easy on my sore jaw. It will be gentle on my empty stomach. It will provide additional warmth.
“All right. If you’d like, I can—what’s wrong?” Dryden frowns, closing the bathroom door and muffling the sound of the washing machine.
“Nothing, I just…you had to touch my dirty clothes to put them in the wash and you made me soup and I just feel really fucking bad about leaving. I wanted to come back right away, but I wasn’t sure, and then the past couple days have been shit and I’m tired. I’m just tired and overwhelmed. And these clothes are really soft.”
I put a palm on my stomach, feeling the soft fleece interior against my skin. Dryden stares at me, hands at his side, probably wondering which part of that he’s meant to respond to.
“What were you saying, though?” I ask, clearing the gravel from my throat and sniffing. I need to get it together.
“I was going to offer to sleep on the couch.” My eyes widen as he gestures toward the green love seat. It’s not really big enough for me to sleep on, let alone him. Nor do I want him to try.
“No, please, I…can we just pretend everything is how it was before? Please?”
“And that I wasn’t an asshole?” he adds. I smile carefully.
“I don’t think my imagination is quite that good.” I get a small smile in exchange for the joke and accept the bowl of soup he holds out to me. It’s hot against my palms.
Dryden tells me to slow down when I drink the soup too fast, like he’s scolding a toddler. Demon gets her own share of scoldings when she decides it’s playtime and attacks his hand every time he moves, growling and wrapping her paws around his wrist as she bites him. It’s adorable. More adorable when paired with a scowling Dryden, who pretends not to find it so as well.
I get nervous when it’s time for bed. Dryden is much better at acting like nothing has changed than I am—sliding into bed on his side of the mattress, turning off the alarm he keeps on a schedule, and clicking off the bedside lamp. I feel like I’m in danger of being evicted when I join him, heart hammering as I push my pant legs down with my feet from where they’d ridden up my calves.
We’re still and silent in the dark. I try to breathe my pulse to a lower rhythm, fingers clenched in the bedsheet. Dryden’s fingers touching the side of my face makes me jump. He slides them through my damp hair, pushing it back from my forehead. It’s gentle like a massage and sweet enough that I can feel the ache of want in my entire body. It shouldn’t be frightening, being touched by a person I love, like this. But it is. It’s terrifying and raw like an open wound given a chance to breathe.
“Relax, Spencer. Everything is fine,” Dryden murmurs, voice low and so much different than the way he sounded the day I left. “This is your home.”
“I want to stay,” I tell him, whispering it to the dark room. It’s the closest I can come to asking for it and harder than it should be to say. I don’t usually get to want things, but I want this. If I can have nothing else in life, I’ll never complain, as long as I can have this.
“I won’t ask you to go,” he replies, and it sounds like he’s making me a promise.
Chapter Twenty-Six
DRYDEN
I’m not sure who sleeps worse, me or Spencer. I’d dozed off at one point, only to be awoken by Spencer sliding out of bed and checking that the front door was locked. A little while after that, he’d sat straight up, perfectly still. Then, I’d thought he’d finally fallen asleep, only to feel tentative fingers on my arm in the early morning hours.
