His head jerks in my direction, eyes wild for a moment as he processes my features. It only takes a second for him to adjust,and he swallows hard, falling back against the pillows with a frown pulling down the corners of his lips.
“Was I screaming again?”
He won’t meet my eyes. That familiar cloak of shame slipping around his shoulders and squeezing until his breaths turn uneven. I crawl over the twisted sheets and comforter to get to him, grabbing him by the nape and pulling his face into my chest.
“Breathe, Beck.”
Desperate hands claw at my back as gasps turn into sobs that shatter us both. I don’t know how to help him. I don’t know how to fix it, but God do I want to. I would do anything to take this pain from him.
“I keep failing,” he says, voice breaking over the words. “I keep failing him. Every time I see him falling, I leap to catch him but it’s too late. I’m always too late, Cal.”
My hands are everywhere. Passing over his bare scalp and over his shoulders, down his back where the fabric of his tank top is clinging to his sweat-slicked skin. It’s not enough. I’m not enough. No amount of love and comfort can heal what’s been broken inside of Beck since his birth parents gave him up. This is an inherent pain, something he’s carried for his entire life that’s only been exacerbated by the long list of losses he’s experienced. He’s spent a long time ignoring it, pushing it down, hiding inside happiness he doesn’t thinks he deserves in order to escape, but it keeps finding him and I don’t know how to protect him from it.
I kiss the top of his head, my own tears falling onto his skin. “I know, love. I know.”
He doesn’t say more after that. He doesn’t need to. We’ve shared this exact moment so many times before. There’s a rhythm to it. A routine. A script we follow that dictates how this scene and the ones after will go. Beck knows it as well as I do. That’s why he doesn’t protest when I pull away once his tearshave subsided. It’s why he takes my hand and allows me to lead him to the shower. Why he stands there silently while steam fills the room and I strip off his sweaty clothes, tossing them in the hamper along with my own before moving us both under the spray of hot water.
Beck’s breathing is a mix of shudders and hiccuping gasps that only ease when I begin to work shampoo into his scalp, turning the cleansing act into one of restoration with gentle kneading motions that go on for longer than necessary.
“Cal?”
“Yes, love?”
“You know I don’t have hair, right?”
A soft laugh leaves me as I begin the rinsing process. “Yeah, I know. Your scalp still needs love though.”
He grunts when I start to rub in conditioner. “Feels like you’re coddling me.”
“I definitely am,” I confirm. “Sometimes you need to be coddled.”
His lips twitch with incredulity, gaze sliding away from mine to concentrate on the tile on a spot somewhere over my head. “I don’t deserve it.”
“I don’t think you’re qualified to speak on what you do or don’t deserve, Beck.”
“What?”
“You’re not being kind to yourself,” I tell him, studying his face as water washes away all traces of the conditioner. “Ever since Charlie died, you’ve been giving in to the voice in your head that only exists to feed you lies about yourself.”
“Charlie didn’t just die, Cal. I killed her.”
“You did what you had to do to save your life. To save my life. To save Selene’s life.”
As partners in the Bureau, we’ve seen each other through multiple uses of lethal force. Never once has he struggled thisbadly. I don’t understand how this time is any different, and if Beck is aware of what sets it apart, he hasn’t let me know yet.
A muscle in his jaw twitches, and I half expect him to pull away but he doesn’t. He stays close, letting me run the washcloth I’ve just covered in body wash over his shoulders and chest.
“I brought Valinsky in,” he says when I’ve made my way to his stomach. “Even after I saw what he did to…” He swallows hard, struggling to say his wife’s name. “He fucking tore her apart, Drake. There was blood everywhere, and Cameron….he was…” Beck shakes his head, trapping the gruesome details I already know between his lips. Then he rolls his head around on his shoulders and starts again. “I could have killed him. No one in the world would have batted an eye. I wouldn’t have even seen the inside of an interrogation room, but I brought him in.”
A soft hum of acknowledgment is all I give him as I crouch to wash his lower half. Thick, muscled thighs, toned calves and feet Selene once said were too beautiful to belong to a man keep me distracted as he lays out his flawed reasoning.
“That bastard murdered my family,” he growls, staring down at me. “He took everything I loved, and I still put the cuffs on him. He’s alive and breathing because even at the lowest moment of my life I was able to exercise enough self-control to keep him that way. And he wanted me to kill him, Cal. He told me he could see the desire in my eyes, that he could smell the blood lust on me. What kind of shit is that?” he asks a dark, rueful laugh rumbling his chest. “Blood lust. Like I’m some kind of rabid animal. Like I was some monster. Like I was…”
“Him,” I offer when he refuses to finish the sentence.
Beck eyes glow with anger and self-loathing. “I thought I was better than him, Drake. Really, I did. I’d never felt blood lust or any real desire to kill anyone before. It’s always just been an outcome I couldn’t avoid, but with Charlie it was all I wanted.”
He pauses like he’s expecting me to fill the silence with shock or outrage or disgust, but I remain quiet, placing my hands on his hips and urging him to turn around. I set about washing the backs of his legs and thighs and the confession hangs in the air. Beck doesn’t speak again until I’m standing and scrubbing his back. He glances over his shoulder, brows furrowed.
