Briar takes it, and I witness the struggle to compose herself. She breathes hard and deep, bites down on her lip, and blinks to clear the tears.
Sometimes she wins.
Sometimes she shudders and another fat tear leaks from the corner of her eye.
I nudge her hair back off her face. It’s so soft, bits of it are stuck to the sweat on her forehead. I wrap a piece of tissue around my hand and dab her brow, her jaw, her neck.
“I’m okay,” she whispers, her voice hoarse.
She’s not, and we both know it. “There’s a difference between pulling yourself together enough to function after reliving something traumatic, and truly coming out the other side of that experience. The work it requires to mentally and physically reset yourself takes time. I think what you mean is you’re finding your feet back in the here and now after a hellish dream.”
“That makes sense,” she murmurs as I see the tension drain out of her body.
I’m proud of her for fighting back.
I see my friend Spark doing the same thing. We’ve shared rooms on runs occasionally. More than once, he’s woken in the middle of the night, yelling some kind of unintelligible commands. And like Briar, he tried to convince me he was okay.
Her eyes are focused on mine now, and in the soft glow from the lamplight, I notice how big and wide they are. Her fingers sneak beneath my pinkie and wrap around it, squeezing it tightly as she closes her eyes and takes another deep breath.
I look down at where her fingers clutch mine. Hers are cut and bruised; her nails are a ripped mess of broken edges. She’s injured, and I somehow need to convince her to document the evidence for later. Because right now, she’s too churned up to think straight. Too hurt, stunned, and shocked to do anything more than function. But in time, she’ll go through all the other stages of healing. And she’ll get angry this was done to her. And maybe she’ll decide to take action, to report it, and I want her to have every single piece of evidence at her disposal. She doesn’t know that the night I helped patch her up, after I put her to bed in my clothes, I crept into the bathroom and scooped the single item of clothing she’d been wearing, let it dry out, and sealed it Ziplock bag. Who knows what kind of hair and body fluids and fibers could be on there?
But overpowering my thoughts of the next logical steps to help her is the utterly masculine satisfaction that it’s my finger she’s clinging to, like she’s drowning in the ocean and I’m a piece of driftwood.
I remind myself she’s too fucking young. I’ll be forty-one next year. And only once did I try to combine being an undercover agent with having a girlfriend. Weicker warned me it wouldn’t work. That the divorce rate is high.
He was right.
“You want some water?” I ask, and she nods.
I wish I’d never asked because she lets go of my finger and pushes herself into a seated position. But I grab the glass anyway and hand it to her.
“Thanks.” She takes a few small sips.
“Feeling better?”
Briar nods, then rolls her neck like a boxer getting ready to fight. “I hate that they’re in my head.” Her voice is quiet in the dim room.
“Be open to the idea it might take professional help to get them out.”
She shrugs. “Maybe.”
We both sit there in silence, but I’m guessing her head is whirling like mine is. I want to push but doubt it’s the best strategy. Everything is too raw for her to be objective.
“Thank you for this, for being here. I’m good now.” When she looks at me, I know she’s not. Fear ices her features.
“You’ll get through this, Briar.”
She nods once, and I can see from the vacant look in her eyes that she’s not here in the room, but off somewhere deep in her thoughts.
I leave and come back with the bedding and cushions off the sofa, then throw them onto the floor.
“What are you doing?” she asks, peering over the edge of the bed.
“Will you sleep better knowing I’m right down here?” I ask.
Her shoulders leave her ears, and she breathes. “I think I would. Thank you.”
Sleeping on the floor is like camping. I’m at one with the discomfort of it. “Sleep, Briar,” I say before pulling the blankets over me. “It’ll all seem better in the morning.”
