27. The Promise
She wonders, sometimes, what their lives would have been had it all been done differently. Not everything, maybe, but a few things. If it hadn't been Raylan she'd had the crush on; if it hadn't been Bowman that she'd married; if she'd been waiting for Boyd when he got back from Kuwait.
She doesn't spend very long on it. Playing what-if is pointless, she learned that lesson. What's past has made them what they are and between them they've built this, what they have, here, together.
Except that right now they don't because Boyd's gone back to sleeping in the spare room.
And she can't take another night like this.
He watches her when he thinks she isn't looking. During the day he slides through the rooms of the house, almost noiseless. It's like a haunting (again). By night he's close by until she falls asleep. That first week is a blur but she knows he was there, almost all of the time, and after that, when she would wake in the night, he would be in the chair by the bed, sometimes reading by the light coming from the landing, sometimes asleep, but most often with his eyes fixed on her.
The stitches are out now, the dressing little more than a plaster and the itching is driving her crazy.
She feels like throwing her head back and screaming.
Instead, she pushes back the bedclothes, swings herself upright. There is the faint pull in her shoulder and she winces but it passes. She examines the wound. Such a small thing, she thinks. There'll be a scar there and she remembers the marks on his body and she smiles to herself wryly: they'll match.
She looks automatically for her slippers but can't find them and decides she doesn't need them, or her robe, or any lights. She moves quietly at first, on tip-toe, then remembers that she wants to wake him up. On the landing she stands for a moment, blinking against the dark, then walks to the pale rectangle of his door, grasps the handle and pushes it open.
It feels cool in there, the curtains only half-closed and stirring in the night-breeze. The room is picked out in hazy moonlight and she smells clean air scented by jasmine, incipient rain and then another, less-defined scent that she knows is him. She takes a step, floorboards squeaking under her feet and the dark tumble of blankets and sheets on the mattress moves, sudden, a jack-knife motion.
'Ava?'
'Yes,' she whispers back, and again wonders why. Something about the dark, perhaps. She pads across, eases herself down onto the mattress before he can struggle up off it.
'Baby, what's wrong?' His voice is roughened, thick with the sleep he's trying to shake off.
'Can't sleep,' she tells him, already sliding beside him, settling the sheet over both of them. She puts her head on his shoulder, presses him back until they lie together. She hears the breath shake through his chest and his hand comes to rest in the middle of her back; its warmth seeps through, thick honey running along her spine. She hadn't realised how badly she needed this until now, when she curls herself around him and feels her own restlessness ease.
'You said I could go anytime I wanted,' she begins softly.
He stiffens, then sighs, resignation colouring the note; he seems to breathe in the scent of her hair, his lips lingering against it for a moment. 'Yes.'
She wonders how anyone as smart as he is can be so stupid. She pushes herself up and stares into his face fiercely.
'Well, I ain't giving you the same choice. You don't get to leave me, Boyd Crowder. Not ever.'
It's a look of wonder on his face and then the backs of his fingers touch her cheek. 'Is that a promise, Ava?'
'Yes, it is,' she says faithfully, her hand over his heart.
Fin