I stood, held out my hands to him. "I'm not allowing you to go forward with that plan."
He gave me several solid moments of defiance before gaining his feet. With a heavy exhale and a blink that made it clear he had doubts about everything, he slipped his hand into mine.
We made our way toward his bedroom, slower and more unsteady than I'd expected. I helped him out of his clothes, even though he huffed about it, and pulled back the covers on his pristinely made bed.
He pressed a thumb to his temple as he asked, "Are you leaving now?"
I almost laughed at the way those words cracked out of him in a whispered challenge. "Cold or heat?" I asked. "Do either help?"
With his boxers riding low and his hip cocked, an arm banded across his chest, and that thumb still grinding his head, he looked like an angry underwear model. Eventually, he said, "Ice, sometimes."
I pointed to the bed by way of command. "I'll be right back."
In the kitchen, I found a reusable cold packet and a dish towel, and filled a glass with ice water. Though it was dark, I could see enough of the space to realize Sebastian's apartment was ruthlessly clean. Ruthlessly. A place for everything and everything in its place. I could perform surgery here.
He probably hated my apartment. It looked like the inside of my head—a lot of contradictory things happening all at once—and I kind of loved it that way because it was comfortable and made me feel like I could follow whichever rules I wanted. But I liked this too. It was the exact opposite of my home yet there was something freeing about the complete absence of stuff. I could see the walls, the countertops, the floors. Night was too far set in to know for sure but I had to believe the windows would just gush with sunlight in the mornings. There was nowhere to hide here and—maybe this was why I liked it so much—no reason to hide.
I didn't have to be perfect. I didn't have to be good. I didn't have to be anything at all. Nothing more than me and all the mess that came with me.
The prescription bottles loitering in the middle of the countertop were the only sign that life wasn't without its bursts of disorder. I gathered them up and tucked them beside the sink. It was the least I could do.
When I returned to the bedroom, I found Sebastian sprawled on his belly, the blankets pooled at his waist while he pinched his brow between his thumb and forefinger. I set the water down and crawled in beside him, my back against the gray upholstered headboard and my ankles crossed in front of me. I brought the towel-wrapped cold pack to the nape of his neck. "Tell me if this is too cold."
"It's okay," he murmured.
Holding the cold pack in place, I dragged my fingers through his hair and scraped my nails over his scalp. At first, it didn't seem like any of this was helping since the corners of his eyes were still creased, his lips were still pulled tight, and his breathing was quick. I was extremely ready to take my phone into the other room and call my friend Jill, a neurologist I'd lived with during med school. But then his shoulders sagged and a heavy breath shuddered out of him, and he shifted his head to my lap and tangled both arms around my waist.
"Will you keep doing that?" he asked.
"Of course."
I slept sitting up, his head in my lap and my hand numb from holding the cold pack. He didn't notice when I slipped out before dawn. It was better that way. I couldn't explain everything to him now, not yet.
But soon.
Chapter 32
Sebastian
I didn't know what day it was. I mean, I could look down at my watch and see the date and time at any moment, but none of it mattered. It was just another day, another stumble through the daylight hours, another long stare into the night. Another round of waiting for Sara to invite herself into my apartment, into my bed, even if she disappeared before dawn the next morning. Another reminder that expectations were stupid and only kicked me in the ass.
I didn't have the luxury of taking a week off to swim around in my misery, seeing as I was fresh off a week away, and it wasn't like time spent suffering on my sofa while surrounded by rotting takeout containers would help matters. And the real upside of surgery was that it extinguished everything else from my mind. I wasn't hungry or tired or sore or broken the fuck apart when I was working a case, and I loved that. I needed that.
I'd thought I was doing a decent job of concealing my hollowed-out existence from anyone who might notice, but Nick Acevedo wanted me to know I was wrong about that. Without asking a single question, the man yanked me up by the scruff and ordered me into running shoes and enough layers that I wouldn't complain about the freezing November wind. Then he forced me to run for eight grueling miles and had the balls to chat about football the whole way. He was content with a one-sided conversation.
For my part, I leaned into the misery. It felt good to feel so awful. It almost came as a relief, as if I finally could pin my emotional aches to something real.
After cleaning ourselves up, Nick dragged me home with him to Cambridge. He didn't ask what happened or why I was giving everyone the most vile scowls in my long history of scowling, and that suited me well enough.
But then he deposited me on a stool at his kitchen island, gestured to his wife, and said, "This is a problem."
Erin looked me over with a concerned frown. "I can see that."
He gathered her up in a tight hug and whispered something to her I couldn't hear while he rubbed her back. I couldn't watch. I had to look away. I didn't get to hug anyone when I came home at night and I didn't get to glance down at a silky blouse like it was something marvelous and I didn't get to have secret conversations in the middle of the kitchen. All I had was a blanket on my sofa that was reasonably cozy and a sound system that would tell me how long to bake a potato and whether the Lakers were playing tonight.
To Erin, Nick said, "I'm going to get dinner started. All he's done is complain about the wind—"
"It's very cold," I cried. "It's dark at two in the afternoon and no one pays any attention to the wind chill."
"—but I have to believe you're right about everything. It has to be. I've never seen this level"—Nick gave me a quick study—"before. I'm gonna need you to dig deep into your toolbox to fix him."
I folded my arms on the countertop and pillowed my head there. "What are you right about this time, Walsh?"
"Something happened between you and Sara," she said. "Something that's hurting your heart right now."
I nodded. No reason to dance around the truth. "I fell in love with her. I asked her to make a choice. She's not ready. That's it. That's all it is."
"When did this happen, Sebastian?" Erin asked. "There was the time I saw you two together here, but when did it start?"
"About two months ago," I said, "and also two years ago. I just—I don't know. It's over, so the timeline doesn't matter."
"No, no. I mean, when did these issues come between you?" she asked as she opened the refrigerator. She gestured to a bottle of beer and I nodded. I hadn't tried drowning my problems yet. That could be a fine solution.
"It started last week in Jamaica and then it took a turn for the worse Monday morning," I said. "And here I am now, in top fighting shape."