Tadhg frowns. “I don’t… I don’t know.”
“Okay,” I say, nodding. “That’s okay. That’s something to start with. Are you hungry?”
He shakes his head.
“Do you want to shower? Or sleep for a while?”
Another shake.
I study his face. He doesn’t look distressed, exactly. But he didn’t have to tell me he was confused for me to know; it’s written in his features. His eyes dart from side to side under a furrowed brow. His hair is messy from the tussle with Patrick, and it’s grown long enough that it’s falling in his eyes a little.
The bruising on his neck is pretty bad and looks even worse in the light of my apartment. I really want to take him to the hospital for an actual evaluation, because strangulation can cause all sorts of terrible shit that isn’t obvious right away, but I know he won’t go.
Instead, I give him a little more time by doing another exam. I check him for signs of neurological deficits, or damage to the cartilage in his throat, or any kind of respiratory distress. I don’t think I’m really accomplishing anything, but it makes me feel better and keeps my hands on him at the same time.
He sits quietly through it all, taking my examination as peacefully as he takes everything else I do to him.
He’s still not speaking by the end of it, though, so I pull myself into his lap, bracketing his hips with my thighs and laying my arms on his broad shoulders. Normally, the closer I get to him, the more it seems to pull him back from the brink of whatever sucks him into his own head.
I have to remind myself to be patient still, though, and ignore the flutter of panic inside my chest. I place soft kisses on his face, nuzzling into his hair and around his jaw. I scratch my nails over his scalp and dig my fingers into his tight traps.
“Come back to me, doll,” I murmur in his ear.
Slowly, he stirs.
When I finally kiss him on the mouth, he responds. It’s a gentle kiss. It’s not going anywhere, and we’re both still too drained and stressed out to be immediately popping wood, but at least he opens up for me. His warm, wet tongue responds to mine, and things start to feel a fraction more like normal.
I break off the kiss after a minute and find him looking at me with less of that vacant look in his eye.
“Talk to me.”
My thumbs glide over his eyebrows and then the arch of his cheekbones, as if I can massage all the tension out of him until he talks. His mouth falls open, though, spit glistening on his pink, plush lower lip from our kiss, and there’s a shudder as he inhales.
“I don’t know what to say, Bambi.”
His voice is so wrecked. He probably shouldn’t be using it, but I need him to not go full-zombie on me until I can get a better read on where his head’s at.
“We won.” I arch an eyebrow at him. “I know it’s kind of a hollow victory, because all we did was succeed in not getting murdered by your father, but still. We got what we wanted. You don’t have to work for him anymore. He’s leaving. It’s over.”
A long time passes before he speaks again, and it takes so much self-control not to fill that silence.
“He took my name with him,” he says. Even under the hoarseness, I can hear the raw pain in his voice. “I didn’t—How can he take my name?”
Tadhg shudders under my hands, so I pull him closer and rest his head against my chest for a second.
“I’m sorry, doll. He’s a piece of shit.” When I pull back, I look him in the eye. “You can have my name. You already belong to me a million times more than you ever belonged to him. Hewants you to get a new name, I’d be fucking honored for you to share mine.”
His eyebrows raise, but I can see the words land one by one, each one a hammer blow against all that misery his father has dealt him over the years.
“Really?”
“Of course. Tadhg suffered a lot of bad shit. Savageinflicteda lot of bad shit. You’re already Sav to the guy’s at the bar, and that’s the start of your normal life. You can be Sav Alexander. I love you. You love me. Why can’t we share a name that we’re both proud of? It can be ours. Whatever that means.”
His jaw tremors, but instead of tearing up, Tadhg reaches up and pulls me into a kiss. This one is more heated than the last, our mouths wide open, tongues wrestling like we’re trying to climb inside each other.
It’s not even sexy. It’s just intense. It’s exactly what we both need.
When we break apart this time, we’re both panting, and I can feel my body waking up a little bit.
