It would have been so easy to simply cave, collapsing into a puddle so Galen could put him back together again, like he wanted to.
But it would be hard, too hard. After five years of holding himself to himself, Bede didn’t think he could let himself be weak. Couldn’t let himself open up his chest and show Galen his pain.
But Galen had tracked him down, in spite of Bede’s efforts to hide. And not only that, he came into the first aid hut, his silent strides bringing him to Bede’s side, his hands cool on Bede’s hot skin, his touch tender.
“These bruises go all the way across your shoulder,” Galen said, his gray eyes concerned. “They look awful. You banged into that fence pretty hard. Why didn’t you say?”
As Galen took the tubes from Bede’s hands, Bede could only look at him through half-lowered lashes, biting back a hiss as the first stroke of cream touched the back of his neck.
“I was going to use both tubes,” said Bede, struggling for normalcy, a facade that cracked when his voice did. “Layer them.”
He wanted normalcy, but he was not going to get it, not when he was about to melt beneath the onslaught of Galen’s kindness.
“Then I’ll use both.”
Galen guided Bede to sit on the rolling stool, hands stroking down both of Bede’s shoulders from behind. The left one hurtlike someone had slammed it with a hammer. The right one didn’t hurt as much. And all of him shivered beneath that touch.
“You should have told me,” said Galen, muttering as he eased the cream along Bede’s shoulder, the back of his neck, gently down his ribs. “You should have.”
Unspoken was the question:Why didn’t you?
Maybe Galen didn’t ask it because he already knew the answer, that Bede didn’t want to be seen as weak.
Galen applied the cream along Bede’s shoulder and part of his back, first from one tube and then the next.
Then he did it all again, easing the healing cream into Bede with his fingers. The swirl of his palm was warm as he worked his way down Bede’s back, not stinting on the cream, going wide with his strokes, fingers curling along the ribs on Bede’s left side.
He even worked the cream into Bede’s left arm, going all the way down to the elbow, as if he knew how far those stabbing pains had reached.
“I want you to rest and relax,” said Galen, sternly, as he put the caps back on the tubes. As Bede stood up, mouth open, ready to protest, Galen shook his finger at him. “No, I mean it. Work will have to go on without you. We’re nearly finished with the knapweed, anyway.”
The knapweed wasn’t the issue. It was the idea, sudden and sharp, that the summer would end, and Bede would take his certificate and leave the valley. After all, he wouldn’t be allowed to stay, and Galen would go back to his regularly scheduled life.
The future loomed like a vast, empty landscape that threatened to swallow him. At the end of summer, there would be nothing holding him in place.
“You should go to bed,” said Galen. “Can you manage?”
Bede didn’t turn around, and before he could say yes or no, Galen had placed the shirt on Bede’s shoulders, gently, like a feather.
The Tylenol still hadn’t kicked in, and it felt like it never would, but Bede could feel a certain warmth left by the creams, as though they were doing their best to get blood flowing beneath the surface of his skin.
Galen came around to the front of him and reached as if to help do up the snap buttons on Bede’s shirt. Bede half heartedly batted those hands away and, snapping his shirt closed, stood up, at once dizzy and mesmerized by Galen’s closeness.
“Are you going to be all right?” asked Galen. “Maybe I should take you to the urgent clinic in Farthing, just to get you checked out.”
“No.”
Galen moved a step closer.
Bede could feel the reaction his body had when somebody cared. Sure, he was a big, bad drug dealer, the scourge of Denver, feared by all. But Winston, having known him for so long, had often treated him with such concern, so it was crazy that he was having the same reaction to Galen now.
“You did take some Tylenol or something, right?”
“Three,” said Bede. “Guess I should have taken them days ago.”
He shrugged, not willing to admit that he wished he had something stronger. That he knew a single line of cocaine and several repeated doses afterwards would have wiped all of his troubles away for a good several hours, even if he never took cocaine. Not that Galen would have liked to hear any of that, so he kept his mouth shut.
“Bed. Got it?”
