Not the death. Not the rain. Not the debrief. Not Arthur’s wife’s voice. Not the brutal, unfair, ordinary fact that sometimes we do everything right and people still die.
It is the holding.
The fact that I do not have to stand upright under my own power for one bloody minute.
I press my forehead into his shoulder and breathe him in.
Rain.
Clean cotton.
Tea.
Smoke, faintly, still clinging somewhere neither of us has managed to wash away.
He does not speak.
He does not stroke my hair like I am fragile. He does not murmur nonsense. He does not make himself larger or softer or cleverer than the moment needs.
He just holds me.
As if I am allowed to be heavy.
As if I can stop being useful and still be safe.
My hands close in the fabric at his sides.
I cry quietly because there is no other kind I can allow here. Even that feels enormous. A few hard, silent breaks of breath against his shoulder. A hot, humiliating spill of tears I cannot stop quickly enough.
He takes it.
All of it.
Steady.
Warm.
There.
For the first time all night, I am not the person everyone is looking to.
I am just a woman in an office, held by a man who should not matter this much.
16
Chapter 15
AJ
Iarrive at thestation with a bag full of board games and the unsettling feeling that I am bringing party supplies to a building that looked death in the face and made toast afterwards less than twenty-four hours ago.
It is not my most confident plan.
In the shop, it had made sense.
The little place in the town centre seems to sell everything. Milk, batteries, birthday candles, wool, plasters, postcards, dog treats, three different kinds of jam and, apparently, a surprisingly aggressive selection of board games stacked between local walking maps and a display of novelty socks. I went in for coffee and came out with Monopoly, Scrabble, Cluedo, a battered-looking pack of cards and something called Herd Mentality because the woman behind the counter told me it was “good for people who like arguing but don’t want to admit it.”
Which, frankly, sounded station-appropriate.
