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“That doesn’t sound like acceptance.”
“It’s information.”
She just waits. Last night Russell’s handwriting put the dead weigh-station address in my father’s private count book. I wanted to cross the yard and make him explain it, but that would tell him which record Mercer needs next. The man signed my birthday cards and every loan amendment in this family. I can hear him saying I’ve misunderstood the page, and I hate how much I want to believe him.
“Control feels safer than depending on anybody,” I say. “My father made trust a loyalty test. If I asked for a record, I was insulting the man who’d given me his word. If I admitted a weakness, I wasn’t fit to lead. And Russell taught me what happened next. Every fact I ever gave him came back sharpened.”
“So you stopped giving anyone facts they could use.”
“I started collecting theirs first.”
It sits between us with the tracker and the mirror and the acknowledgment I signed. She doesn’t tell me the lesson excuses anything. She slides her fingers inside my open collar and rests them against my skin above the bandage.
“You asked me for help with the shirt,” she says.
“You woke up while I was losing a fight with it.”
“Your version contains less growth.”
“It usually does.”
She undoes the top button she just closed. “Then try the accurate version.”
I look at her hand and understand before she reaches the second button.
“I need you,” I say.
“For the shirt?”
“For this. For that room in five hours. For the part of me that would rather tear the shoulder again than let anybody see I can’t lift my arm.” I swallow. “And I’m not bleeding.”
She goes still.
“You said to say it again when I wasn’t bleeding.” My voice isn’t steady. I don’t try to make it steady. “I love you, Tessa. I loved you at the motel when you kept the chain on the door. I loved you when you told me no in my own office. I love you right now while you’re taking my shirt off with that look on your face. I don’t need you to say anything. I just need you to have it on the record.”
Her eyes go bright. She presses her lips together hard.
“I heard it,” she whispers.
“That’s all I wanted.”
“That isn’t a real answer. I know it isn’t.” She shakes her head once, like she’s shaking off a fly. “I heard it. I’m keeping it. Let me keep it for a while before I do anything with it.”
“Keep it as long as you want.”
She kisses me. Her mouth is warm and sure and careful only where the injury requires. She opens the rest of my shirt and eases the right sleeve off my hand without raising the shoulder.
The joint pulls when I shift. I stop. She holds the shirt still until the pain settles. No apology. No praise for putting up with it. She waits for accurate information, then finishes the movement I can’t.
“Better system than mine,” I say.
“Your system was to damage the shirt or yourself.”
“The shirt was losing.”
“Brave claim from a man trapped in one sleeve.”
She opens my trousers. I lift my hips as far as I can without putting weight through either arm, and she draws everything down and off and leaves me naked on the edge of her bed while she’s still wearing my shirt.
