“You’re okay. Everything is fine,” I repeated, still hugging him. I swept my hands from the nape of his neck, across his trapezius muscles, over his shoulders and down his arms, applying light pressure. Then I did it again and again, before moving them right above his chest, starting there before going up to continue the route up to the base of his neck, across and down his arms.
The shaking only got a little better.
Screw it.
My knees creaked as I got back up to my feet and then did something I had never done before. Nothing I had ever even dreamed of doing with Rip, ever. But desperate times called for desperate measures.
I took a step closer to him and settled myself, my butt, my entire body, high up onto his right thigh, pulling his opposite leg in so that I forcefully made him sandwich me in between him, and I wrapped my arms and hands and as much of my body around him as I could. My palm went straight to the top of his neck and dragged my hand down his spine, making circles at the base while my other one held the back of his head.
“Rip,” I whispered right beside his ear since I had set my cheek a millimeter away from his. “Everything is fine.”
My hand circled his back again, and I hugged him tighter to me, his own shakes moving me too.
“It’s me, Luna,” I told him. “You’re okay. Everything is okay.”
I grazed my fingertips through the short, soft hair at the back of his head like he’d done for me outside of my sister’s apartment.
“Talk to me, Rip,” I asked him. “You’re safe. You’re okay. Nothing happened. I need you to take a deep breath.”
Nothing. He still gave me nothing.
I ran my fingers through his hair again, hearing the near-desperation in my voice. “You’re scaring me. Talk to me, please. I don’t like you shaking like this.”
I rubbed his back. I promised him he was fine. I told him I’d take care of him.
Over and over again until the big man in my arms settled… a little more, but it was more than nothing. At least we were getting somewhere.
“We can go get ice cream after this if you want.” I kept talking to him, not sure if that’s what was helping. “That sundae this weekend was pretty good, but I know this really good place close to the shop with the best ice cream. They make it in small batches every day. If we can’t go today, I’ll bring you some on my lunch break soon.”
I slid my hand back up to rub the back of his cool but damp neck. The thigh under me flexed and tensed, and I put a little more force into rubbing the hard muscles on his nape. “You know, I always imagined that if my mom had been around, she would have hugged me and rubbed my back when I needed her. I tried looking up information on her a few times, my mom, I mean, but there are so many people with the name Teresa Ramirez, it was like searching for a needle in a haystack. That’s why I’m on top of you right now in case you’re wondering. I bet she would have made me flan too.
“One time, I bought those little packages of flan when I lived with my dad, and he found them and lost it. I figured my mom probably liked it and it set him off, but I don’t know. Everything used to make him mad. Maybe he just hated flan, but I think it was more than that. I don’t know,” I kept rambling, not even sure what the hell I was saying in the first place, but sensing it was doing something.
“If you haven’t had flan before, I’ll bring you some from this bakery I go to sometimes. I’d say I would make it for you, but you really don’t want me to even bother trying. It would probably end up burning the pot and my entire kitchen down.” I dragged my hand up his spine and rubbed his neck, alternately. “Oh! Wait a sec.”
I dug inside my T-shirt and undid the clasp of the necklace I had on. I’d seen it that morning and had a feeling about it. How about that? Even with my fingers still a little shaky, it only took a second to slip the chain around Rip’s neck and redo the clasp to keep it on him. I pulled back just enough to see the ice cream charm on it fall right on top of the notch of his throat. It looked ridiculous there, but I patted it down in place anyway. “Look. See? It has a little ice cream cone on it. To make you feel better.”
His whole body tightened for a moment before a loud burst of a noise exploded from his chest. And in the time it took me to process the sound, it was gone, and his muscles had relaxed even more. I’d swear his breathing slowed too.
“There we go,” I told him, putting pressure on his back and neck again. “You’re good. You’re all right.”
For some reason, that only made me want to hug him tighter. He was so big, it was hard to try and wrap him up; my arms could barely reach. I palmed the back of his head and lightly scratched at his scalp the way Lily used to like when she was little. She had done it to me too every once in a while when she’d been falling asleep, and I had loved it too.
From the way his body loosened, muscle by muscle, I figured he did too.
So I kept scratching.
Slowly but surely, that big body relaxed against mine, not totally, but it was something.
“You okay?” I asked when the only movement I felt come out of him were deep, deep breaths.
Part of me expected him to snap at me, to shove me off his lap, to tell me to fuck off.
But none of that happened.
One of the arms he’d had at his sides came up and his hand settled at my hip, giving it a light squeeze. His forehead dropped to that spot where my shoulder met my neck, and I could feel his soft puffs of breathing on my collarbones and chest. His hand squeezed my hip again. And my heart… it didn’t know what to do.
“Tell me what you need,” I asked him.
