I got him up. He didn’t fight it. Into the bathroom, shower running, and I waited in the doorway long enough to make sure he was standing under the water before I stepped back into the room.
I found a trash bag in the bottom of his closet and went back for his clothes. Picked them up piece by piece. The shirt, heavy and cold. The jeans. The jacket last, and I didn’t look too closely at what had dried into the seams. His boots I set aside—they could be cleaned. The rest couldn’t.
I tied the bag off and put it outside the door.
When Holden came out he was clean and hollow-eyed, a towel around his waist and nothing else. I handed him sweats from his dresser without speaking. He dressed slowly.
Once we were on the bed, and I had my arms around him again, neither of us said anything for a long time.
“You should sleep,” I said softly. “Just for a little while.”
“Can’t.” But even as he said it, his eyes were drooping. “Every time I close my eyes, I see him.”
“Then I’ll stay. I’ll be right here when you wake up.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Danny’s mom. Lindsay.” He swallowed. “Someone should—she needs to know. Someone should be with her.”
“You need someone too,” I said.
“I’ll be asleep.” His hand found mine, fingers too heavy to grip properly. “I just need you to stay until I’m out. She needs you more than I do right now. She’s alone, Bea. I got all of this—” a vague gesture, meaning the club, the brothers beyond the door “—and she’s got nobody.”
I looked at him. The plea in it wasn’t for himself. Even now, broken open and half gone with grief and whiskey, he was thinking about a woman who didn’t know yet that she wasn’t getting her son back.
“Okay,” I said quietly. “I’ll stay until you’re asleep. Then I’ll go.”
He exhaled, some last held thing releasing. “Thank you.”
He was already drifting, grief and alcohol pulling him under. I held him and didn’t move. “I love you,” I whispered, even though I wasn’t sure he could hear me anymore.
His breathing slowed. Deepened. The tension in his face softened by degrees until he finally looked like himself again. I pressed a kiss to his forehead. Then I eased out from under him, careful and slow, and pulled the blanket up over his shoulders.
I wrote a note on the back of a receipt.Keeping my promise. Call me when you wake up. I love you.Left it on the nightstand where he’d see it.
Then I slipped out and pulled the door closed softly behind me. The bag was where I’d left it. Handful was at the end of the hall, back against the wall, forearms on his knees. Watching.
I picked up the bag and held it out. He stood and took it without a word. He knew what it was. He knew what to do with it.
I walked past him toward the main room.
I’d expected it to be quieter by now—men dispersed, the worst of it absorbed into the private grieving that people like this did behind closed doors. Instead they were all still there. Brothers in cuts, old ladies with their arms around each other,men who looked like they’d been staring at the floor for hours. Someone had turned the lights low. Nobody was talking much.
Every face I passed had the same look. Red-rimmed eyes. The particular stillness of people who didn’t know what to do with their hands.
I was almost to the door when a voice stopped me.
“Bea.”
Glitch. He was leaning against the wall near the exit, arms crossed, watching me with the quiet attention he brought to everything. He looked wrecked.
“He’s asleep,” I said, because it seemed like the thing he needed to know.
He nodded. “Where are you going?”
“Danny’s mother. Holden asked me to check on her.”
“Dutch and Indira are already there.” He pushed off the wall. “I’ll take you.”
I turned and followed Glitch out into the night.
