Her chin lifts.I stand behind her, hands light at her ribs.“In three,” I count against her body.“Out five.”We do it until the tremor in her exhale is gone.I make her do it with eyes open, eyes closed, face turned to the corner like a child, then facing me.I watch the pulse in her throat, the way her shoulder blades settle.
“Again,” I say.“Good girl.”
Guns next.I lay the pistol down, slide the mag out, lock the slide, let her see it empty.“You don’t point anything you haven’t cleared yourself.”
I put the kit beside it.Cloth, oil, and a little brush.“It’s a tool.Treat it like one.”I take it apart and build it back together, not for speed, for understanding.Then I hand it over.She mirrors me: wipe, check, re-seat.Again.Again.Until the motions stop being a string of thoughts and turn into a single breath.
I let her feel the weight balanced in her hands, help her settle her wrists, loosen her shoulders, teach her where not to put her fingers by moving her hands with mine.Her fingers aren’t shy.She mirrors me, learns the sequence, fumbles once, twice, swallows a curse, gets angry, gets better.We cycle through the same sequence until the clumsy edges sand down.Until it doesn’t look to me like it feels foreign in her grip.
Load, unload, stow.Clean, check, stow.Minutes drag into an hour.By the time I take it back to the table, the nervous tremor in her hands is gone.
The next morning, after coffee, knots.
I loop paracord around her wrists, snug, not cruel, then tip her hands palm to palm and make her watch what I’m doing.“You’re not going to outmuscle anyone,” I tell her.“You’re going to outlast them.”I turn her to the mat, shoulder to shoulder with me, and show her how to make space, how to breathe when panic tries to shut the ribs, how to hunt for millimeters instead of miracles.
She bites her lip, sweat slicking at her temple as she works.It’s not pretty.When she finally slips free, she shows me both hands like proof.I kiss the red grooves.“Again.”
I tie tighter.She works longer.I tie tighter still.Her breath goes ragged; she resets it the way I taught her using odd counts and keeps going.When the cord finally kisses skin open, blood beads.I’m there with saline and gauze.“That’s the last time we use paracord,” I say, voice even.“Lesson learned.”
Before I set her again, I catch her face in my hands.“Signals.”I tap her wrist: one, three, five.“Five means you’re okay.Three means slow down.One means stop.If your mouth is free, say odd.I will stop on any of them.Understood?”
“Understood.”
“Out there, there are no taps, no safe word.Out there you make your own rules with whatever’s left of your breath.In here we build the reflex, so your body finds it when your mind can’t.”
She nods.Chin up.I’m so fucking proud of her, more proud of her than I’ve ever been of anyone in my entire life.I don’t think she knows what she gives me during these sessions.The level of trust she so freely gifts.I could kill her before her hand lifts to tapone, before her mouth moves to form the wordodd.Somewhere in her she knows that.But, she comes down here every day and trusts me not to.
EvenafterLondon, after the ghosts, after I walked out.She knows I don’t believe her.She knows I’m pissed.She stands here anyway and gives me her throat and her wrists.That’s not naiveté.That’s faith I haven’t earned and will never deserve.It lodges under my ribs; a promise that one day I won’t have to pretend things are normal to touch her.
I blindfold her, not to scare her, okay, to scare her a little, but mostly to take the cheating away from her hands.“Feel, not see,” I say, and rest my palm between her shoulder blades until her spine unlocks.I bind her again, never exactly the same way twice, and step back.I don’t talk her through it today.I listen for her breath.Hear the small change in sound when the cord bites.The slow scrape of fabric over the mat when she rolls to change leverage.
When it’s too much, she says, “odd,” and I’m on her wrists in a heartbeat, cutting her free, rubbing warmth back into her fingers.“Good girl,” I murmur against her hair.
We go again.
I rotate the variables.Hands front, hands back, seated, standing.I never give her a pattern to memorize.By the time the light in the basement goes from white to dark, she frees herself in under a minute with a blindfold on and her breath steady.The last mark on her wrist is deep.I kiss and bandage it.
“That’s enough for today,” I tell her.
She leans into me, damp hair against my throat, wrists bandaged.“Again tomorrow,” she says.
“Again tomorrow,” I repeat, then toss her over my shoulder and smack her ass.She yelps, laughing, and I carry her up both flights, straight into the bathroom.
I set the water where she likes it.Hot enough to fog the glass.Steam climbs the tiles.I peel her out of the hoodie, kiss the damp line at the back of her neck, and we step in.
I wash her.Strawberry shampoo, my hands gentle at her scalp, then down the curve of her shoulders, over the faint rope kisses blooming along her forearms.L I N D Y /// G I R Lghosts careful along the marks.“Three?”I murmur against her temple.
She taps my ribs three times.Okay.
After, I wrap her in a towel from the warmer and kneel to dry her calves, the backs of her knees, each toe.I carry her to the counter, sit her on the cool stone, dab arnica along the angry lines and liquid silk on the places that will ache tomorrow.“You did well,” I say.“Better than well.”
She smiles like it hurts in a good way.“I like making you proud of me.”
“I am proud of you, my gorgeous Lindy girl.”I press Tylenol and a glass of water into her hand.“Hydrate.”
In our room, I tug one of my shirts over her head, sleeves past her knuckles.I braid her hair loose so it won’t pull while she sleeps and knot it with the elastic she keeps on her nightstand.I set a heat pack across her shoulders, slide an ice sleeve over her wrist, and then stretch out behind her, chest to her back, an arm around her waist.
“Read to me?”she asks, drowsy.
