He didn’t go away. He picked me up again and did the whole carrying-me-pushing-my-IV-stand back into the room thing, laid me on the bed and threw the covers back on me.
I laid back and pulled the covers high up with my good hand which, luckily, as I was right-handed, was my right one. I held onto the covers, closed my eyes and turned my face in the opposite direction of Hector.
“Mamita, look at me.” His voice was still soft.
“Go away,” I repeated, my voice was still soft too.
“We need to talk.”
“Go away.”
“Sadie,” he murmured gently.
That’s when I found her, she wasn’t very far. She slid into my skin easily because normally, she lived there.
I opened my eyes, turned my head and looked at Hector. Regardless of what had happened to me last night, what he had seen, what he’d done last night and just now and the way I looked, I was calm, assured and ice cold.
“Go… away,” I enunciated it very clearly so there was plenty of time for the icicles to form on both words.
It was then, to my shock (because no one penetrated the ice fortress, no one, not even my father), Hector leaned forward so close he was barely a couple of inches away. He put one hand on my pillow and the other one hit the bed low, by my waist.
I drew in breath.
Still with a soft voice he said, “She’s in there. Now I’ve seen her twice. Three times, if you count when you lost it in Lee’s office and nearly ripped open your palms with your own f**kin’ fingernails.”
Oh my.
He didn’t give me a chance to respond, he kept talking. “I know she’s in there and I’m warnin’ you, Sadie, I’m gonna pull her out.”
The Ice Princess, as ever, stayed calm.
“Do I have to call security?” I asked like it was all the same to me.
He didn’t answer. I started to stare him down and I waited for him to look away. He didn’t look away.
Instead he said, “I know about you.”
“You don’t know a thing about me,” I retorted acidly.
He just smiled and I’d never really seen him smile, not full on. I’d seen him grin. I’d heard him chuckle at something my father said. But not a smile.
It was lazy, it was slow and it was glamorous.
Then he said, “I’ll give you time, you’ve been through hell but, when the time is right, I’m gonna pull her out.”
At his words, The Ice Princess (who never let go), started slipping. I held onto her by my mental fingernails and pulled her back.
“Maybe you need to get some sleep,” I suggested.
Hector didn’t respond. He stared at me and I stared at him.
Again, I waited for him to back down, to look away.
He didn’t.
So for the first time since I could remember, I did.
My eyes slid to the side and then something even weirder happened. While I was looking away, he leaned in deeper, I felt his hand cup the back of my head, he lifted it gently and he kissed the top of my head.