Nate willed back tears, relieved that James didn’t question his odd request. He couldn’t bear to explain why it meant so much to him. All he could see was Alden with that brush in his hand, holding it like a lifeline, punctuating his words with quick waves and tugs of gray bristles down his inky hair.
Reed returned as James walked away. “The rest is for you,” he said, pushing the jug into Nate’s hands. As Nate swallowed down gritty, warm water, Reed asked, “Any news?”
Nate set the jug down. “He’s beyond help,” he said, toneless. “Could be tonight. Tomorrow.”
It couldn’t be real. He was telling a story.
Reed settled down beside him, close but not touching. His body radiated warmth, and Nate wanted to lean in and find comfort in it, but he held very still.
“I was so jealous of him.” Reed spoke softly, apologetically.
Nate stifled an incredulous laugh. “Of Alden?”
“Yes. You were always going to him. I thought you were lovers. And I thought he. . .”
“You thought he was giving me chem.”
“Yes. And I hated him for it. But I think I hated him for loving you even more.”
It was something Nate would have given his hand to hear a month ago, but tonight the words rolled off him like beads of oil. He was so tired.
“Alden said once. . .he said he hoped it would be you watching me die, and not him. I didn’t understand.” Nate let out a dry sob. “Reed, I want him to wake up. So I can tell him. . .”
“Tell him what?” Reed asked, pained.
“That I shouldn’t have gone to the Breakers. I should have stayed and died there. And then he’d be okay. That I’m s-s-sorry.” Nate tripped over his words. “I’m so sorry.”
“He wanted you to go.” Reed went breathy with exasperation. “Nate. He didn’t want you to stay and die.”
Nate pressed his lips together, but he couldn’t hold back the low choke of a sob. They’d hurt each other, scraped the space between them raw—but Alden had never stopped feeling like home in his own jagged way. “He’s my best friend.”
Reed put his arm around Nate’s good shoulder hesitantly and pulled him close. “I know.”
Resting his head against Reed, Nate felt a bruised kind of relief that Reed left it at that. He didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Didn’t want to know what Reed saw from the outside looking in.
Reed’s breath warmed Nate’s hair, steadily evening toward the sleep none of them had been able to afford. Not for days. He slumped against Nate, heavy with exhaustion, and Nate shifted to carefully brace him where they sat with their backs against the sofa that smelled like dust and mildew. His palm rested against Nate’s knee, and Nate took it carefully, as if cradling glass. His thumb idly stroked the warm skin at the back of Reed’s hand, seeking comfort when sleep refused to come. Not with every rattling, terrible sound Alden made.
He closed his eyes, cocooned in the dark room with everyone he loved.
“Nate. Nate.”
Nate startled at the dim glow of a crank-light.
Sparks tried to pry him from Reed’s sleeping form. “James brought you a hairbrush,” she said. “Well, not for you. Though you could stand to use it.”
Nate wiggled out from beside Reed and eased him onto the floor, careful not to wake him. He tucked a cushion under Reed’s head. “Thank you.”
Sparks’s face was freshly shaven, her hair clean and damp. When her appearance matched who she was, the tightness around her eyes went away. She gave him a sad, encouraging nod as she handed him the brush. It was metal with glossy purple bristles—nothing like Alden’s carved bone brush with soft bristles that felt like they had come from an animal. Nate stared at it, unsettled by the sense that he’d seen it before. But nothing in the Withers looked like this.
Shaking off the prickle of a memory, Nate ran the brush through one of the worst tangles. Alden’s hair got caught in the bristles immediately.
“Here,” Sparks said, prying the brush out of his hands. “Stick to tinkering.”
“Show me how,” Nate whispered.Hehad to do this. No one else.
Sparks’s eyes flickered in the early dawn light glowing through the window. She took a careful handful of Alden’s hair and gripped it tight. “This way, it won’t hurt him.”
Starting at the tips, she brushed short, firm strokes. Little by little, the strand she held in her palm began to straighten out, gleaming despite the singed-gray tips.
