I started the shower—warm, not hot.I brought a glass of water and a wet washcloth and set them on the counter like offerings.“Do you want help?”I asked.
His hands trembled.“Yeah,” he said.The boy who’d been paraded like a prize vanished, and the one who stayed put looked like he might break.
I undid his buttons like I was untying a knot.I scraped glitter from his neck with my thumb.I placed him under the spray and undressed.Once I joined him, I washed his hair the way you handle something you can’t afford to ruin.I rinsed the smell from him, rinsed the fear, and his shoulders stopped trying to hold up the world for the first time in hours.
He leaned into the water, and when I rinsed the last of the soap from his hair, he met my eyes, raw, ridiculous, and real.I wanted to say everything that would make it right, but I knew there were no words big enough.
So, I did the thing that mattered: I stayed.
I scrubbed until the night felt less like an animal clinging to his skin, then wrapped him in a towel and tried to be part of the dark that wouldn’t break under him.I sat him on the closed toilet lid and worked my fingers through the damp curls at the nape of his neck, slow and careful, until his chest stopped pounding like a warning and found a softer rhythm.His breath loosened.The tension in his shoulders eased as if he’d been holding the room up and finally set it down.
“Better?”I asked.
He blinked, eyes half-closed.“I don’t know if I can keep this up,” he said at last, voice small.“I don’t want to be someone I don’t even want to meet.I just want to play my music.”
“I know,” I said.
“Rod thinks it’s part of the job.”
“Rod says a lot at midnight he wouldn’t at noon,” I answered, not bothering to point out that Roderick started unraveling the night he lost Kit.It wouldn’t help.Barret cracked one eye.
“You gonna tuck me in and tell me a story?”he asked with a crooked grin.
“If you’re lucky,” I said.
His smile softened, small and surprised, like a door that hadn’t meant to open.I led him to the bed, peeled back the covers, and climbed in after him.We lay on our sides, facing each other, knees brushing under the sheet like two teenagers who’d stolen a secret.I didn’t reach for more.He did—his hand sliding to my jaw, his thumb resting at the corner of my mouth as if he were learning my face by Braille.
“Do you think I’m good?”he asked.“Like ...good at being a person?”
“You’re the best person I know,” I said, and the truth landed with a bit of weight that surprised me.“And you’re learning how to become someone.It’s about experiences and making the right choices.”
He kissed me with the gentleness of someone asking permission and getting it.When the kiss grew hungry, I drew back and pressed my forehead to his, counting—one, two, three—up to a hundred in my head until the urge settled.He breathed with me, matching the slow count.
“You don’t want me?”he whispered.
“I do,” I said, my fingers tracing his jaw like a small benediction, “but right now you’re still drunk, maybe high.I’m not rejecting you.I’m protecting the parts of you I want to love.”
“If I’m clean?”he asked, as if it were a dare and a promise.
“What if we talk about it tomorrow morning?”I offered.“When you’re awake and you know what you’re choosing.”
“I can do that,” he said.
He fell asleep with his fingers curled in my shirt, like I was a rope he was clinging to, and for a breath I let myself believe that being here—doing this—might be enough.
The kettle screams.I shut it off, and my hands don’t shake, which feels like cheating.
I pour water over the tea leaves and breathe in the steam like medicine.I grab a second mug for Barret.I line up honey, lemon, the jar of sugar he pretends not to use.
My mind tries to sprint—call the therapist, call the pilot, pack a bag, retreat to a city where sessions have couches and schedules, and I can pay to be told what to do.But leaving would be running, and I don’t want to turn this house into another place I ran from the minute it asked me to sit with something hard.
Barret’s kiss burns on my mouth.Do it for all of us.He trusts me to hold a line I keep wanting to jump over.
ChapterEleven
Barret
I stay with Cleo almost all day, guitar in my lap because that’s what she asked for—“Play like music might stitch the air together.”
