I climb into the bed with him.
I lie down on my back and I pull him with me and he comes with his body folding against mine, his head on my chest, his arm across my stomach, his legs tangled with mine. He curls into me with every part of himself. His face presses into the space below my collarbone and his fist grips the towel at my waist. His body shakes against mine in tremors he can't control.
He's holding on the way he held on in the water. Full-body. Total. Like if he lets go of any single point of contact, the current will take him again.
"I'm right here, darling," I say. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm right here."
His grip tightens. His breathing is still ragged against my chest. Each exhale damp and warm on my skin, and I can feel his heart hammering through his ribs into mine. I don't move or adjust. I don't wrap my arms around him because I don't know if being held is different from holding on.
What if his arms around me feels good but my arms around him feels like a cage? I keep my hands where they are, one on the mattress, one on my own chest, and I let him hold me without holding him back.
He cries. Not loudly. Not the kind of crying that comes with sound. The kind that comes with shaking, with the silent convulsion of a body releasing pain it's been holding for too long. I feel it in his shoulders, in the way his ribs expand and contract against my side, in the wet warmth that spreads on my chest where his face is pressed.
He cries the way a person cries when they've been so scared for so long that the fear has become structural and taking it down, even one piece of it, brings the whole wall with it.
I stay still and talk because talking is the thing I know how to do.
"You're okay now. You're in my bed. You're warm and you're breathing. Nothing is going to hurt you. Not the water. Not anything. I'm here and I'll take care of you."
The shaking slows. His breathing evens out. His grip loosens, just easing, the fist at my waist opening into a palm, his legs relaxing against mine. The survival grip easing. Still holding on. But softer now. Choosing instead of clinging.
His breathing deepens. Slows. The steady rhythm of someone sliding into sleep, the body finally letting go of the emergency, the nervous system standing down.
He's asleep. Against my chest, on my heartbeat, wrapped around me. I lie there and listen to him breathe.
I should get up and get him water. I should check on Sheila, who is probably wearing a hole in the floor pacing. I should do a dozen things.
I don't move.
My brave, scared, beautiful little Stormy. Floating in the Gulf of Mexico in a hot pink bathing suit, drowning, and the first thing he said when I got to him wasyou came.
Fuck, yeah, I came.
And I'm not going anywhere.
Chapter 14: Stormy
I wake up to the sound of breathing.
Deep and steady, rising and falling in a rhythm that my body has synced to, my own chest expanding and contracting in time with the one near me.
I don't open my eyes right away. I lie there and feel things. The bed under me, softer than the guest room mattress. The warmth on my left side, close but not touching. The smell of soap I've been noticing for weeks from a distance and am now breathing in from inches away.
We've come apart in sleep. His chest was under my ear when I fell asleep. His heartbeat was the last thing I heard. But sleep shifts bodies the way currents shift water, and sometime in the hour we've been out, I rolled to my side and he rolled to his back and a gap opened between us. Six inches, maybe. A gap that my body crossed once already today — in the water, in the shower, on the stairs — but always out of survival. Always because I was drowning and he was the life raft.
I'm not drowning now.
I open my eyes to look at him. Tex is asleep.
He's on his back, one arm thrown above his head, the other resting on his stomach. The towel around his waist has shifted but is still covering him. His chest rises and falls in those deep, slow swells. His face is completely open. The lines around his mouth are smooth. His lips are slightly parted under the beard. His eyelashes are dark against his cheeks and they're longer than I would have guessed, which is a strange thing to notice about a man this large but I notice it anyway.
He's exhausted. He swam into the water, fought a rip current, carried me through waves and up a beach, then upthree flights of stairs. He held me in a shower and dried me with a towel. He put me in his bed and let me hold onto him until the shaking stopped and didn't move once while I sobbed on his chest.
He didn't leave me.
We've been asleep for a while. An hour, maybe more. The room is quiet and the only sounds are his breathing and the distant hum of the air conditioning.
I almost died today.
