Where Winter Finds You (Black Dagger Brotherhood #18)- J.R Ward Page 0,62
of him that she couldn’t possibly get her arms around all of him—so she held on to what she could. Cradling him, she closed her eyes and took his suffering into herself.
She had no idea what the cause was. But as he trembled against her, the only thing that went through her mind was that she wasn’t leaving him. Ever. She was going to stand by him, wherever this took either of them. Because this kind of pain?
There was a terrible loss behind it.
She knew this because she had felt echoes of the same grief herself. She also knew that this was the kind of thing you kept hidden from everyone around you—kept hidden, most of the time, even from yourself. It was the sort of loss that changed the color of the night sky, and the feel of the ground beneath your feet, and the scents that entered your nose. This was new-life pain.
As in, you were living one way, and then…
Everything changed. You changed. The world changed.
And it was never the same again.
“It’s okay,” she whispered as her own eyes teared up. “I’ve got you… and I’m not letting go…”
Sometime later—it could have been hours—she felt him still. And as he drew in a ragged breath, she felt its exhale on her shoulder, and the sudden stillness of him scared her more than the weeping had. She wasn’t sure what would come in this aftermath.
“I need…” His voice was nothing more than a rasp. “Bathroom.”
“Okay, yeah, of course.”
Releasing her hold, she moved herself out of his way as he dragged himself up off the carpet, dropped his head and stumbled out of sight. When the door closed, she wasn’t surprised.
The sound of water was expected. She imagined him splashing his face with something cool, and staring at himself in the mirror as he tried to get regrounded in the present. She knew what that was like. How you got sucked back into the past, against your will, revisiting scenes you wanted to avoid. How once the past got a stranglehold on you, it was like an anchor with grasping hands, dragging you down, down, down, until you couldn’t breathe and you didn’t know where the surface was anymore.
As a shiver went through her, she didn’t know whether it was from her own emotions or the fact that she was naked and the fire was nothing but embers now. Reaching over, she pulled the fur throw rug around her shoulders and stared at the gray ash beneath what was left of the logs that had burned so brightly. Now, there was nearly nothing left of the hardwood, the bodies eaten away, the small, twisted cores hanging together out of habit rather than structure.
Her eyes were still on the last of the fire when the bathroom door reopened.
She turned around quick.
Trez had tied a towel around his waist, and there was a gloss to his face as if he had indeed splashed himself with water. His eyes were still bloodshot. And they still would not meet her own.
As he stood in that doorway, he stared off into space as if waiting for some kind of cue.
“Tell me about her,” Therese said softly.
* * *
Trez heard the words spoken to him from far, far away, and he looked to the sound. The sight of his female, there, on the floor, the soft white throw rug wrapped around her bare shoulders, her lovely dark hair tangled and curled around her, took a moment to sink in
In the bathroom, braced over the sink after he had washed his face with cold water, he had hung his head and debated whether or not he was going to throw up. Then he had briefly glanced over at the window she had used so well earlier, and wondered if following her example might not be a good idea.
It certainly seemed easier than explaining himself.
Except he’d left her hanging out here, and no matter how much skipping town seemed like a plan worth serious consideration, he was not going to do that to her.
She deserved an explanation.
And sure enough, as he stood here like a zombie, she had just asked him for one.
To give himself some more time—even though he could have used a year or more, maybe eighteen months, preferably—he went over and sat on the foot of the bed. Planting his elbows on his knees, he was aware that he was pulling a classic The Thinker pose.