✰ 𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝟷𝟻: 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚆𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚕.
cw: graphic aftermath of violence, blood, death.
✰ 𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝟷𝟻: 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚆𝚒𝚗𝚍𝚖𝚒𝚕𝚕.
Willie Nelson's place sat on a stretch of land that always felt unfinished. No proper fences. No clean lines. Just long, uneven grass bending under the wind and patches of dirt where something had tried to grow and failed.
The kind of place people ended up in, not chose.
I walked there faster than I should have. My boots struck the hard-packed earth with a rhythm too quick for a casual stroll, too deliberate for a panicked flight.
Roy's voice was still in my head. By now it lived there as comfortably as my own thoughts. Collection to the Nelsons’. Not check on him. Not make sure he’s alright.
The house came into view slowly. Small. White paint peeling under the sun. A porch that leaned slightly to one side.
Gator’s patrol car was parked out front. The driver’s door hung open. Engine off. No movement.
For a moment, I just stood there, looking at the house. My eyes traced the peeling paint, the sagging porch, the broken windowpane covered with a sheet of plastic.
Listening. Nothing. No voices. No movement. No sound except the wind pushing softly against the sides of the house.
The front door was cracked open. Just enough.
I moved toward it, boots steady against the wood of the porch. Each step resonated with a solid thud. I slowly pushed the door open. The hinges shrieked, a high-pitched cry that seemed to tear the quiet.
The smell hit first. Metallic. Warm. Sadly, familiar. A coppery cloud that clung to the back of my throat, a taste of iron on my tongue. Blood always smelled the same, no matter where you were, a scent that bypassed reason and spoke directly to the gut.
Inside, the house was dim, curtains half-drawn, heavy fabric blocking most of the summer light. What little light found its way slipped through narrow gaps, cutting the room into sharp, angular pieces, illuminating motes of dust dancing in the stale air.
He was on the floor. Gator. Sitting against the wall, his back pressed tight to the faded floral wallpaper, legs bent awkwardly in front of him, hands tangled in his hair like he was trying to hold his head together. His uniform, usually so crisp, was rumpled, a dark stain blossoming on one knee. He didn’t move when I stepped in. Didn’t look up. Just… sat there.
The man was a few feet away. On his back. Still. His eyes stared blankly at the stained ceiling. Blood pooled out beneath him, spreading slowly across the floorboards, dark and thick, finding its own path across the worn linoleum.
For a second, the room held both of them like it didn’t know which one mattered more, the living or the dead.
Then Gator made a sound. Not a word. Just something low and broken.
He lifted his head. Looked at me. His eyes were wrong. Too wide. Too empty. Like something had been taken out of them and replaced with nothing.
“I–” he started. Stopped. Swallowed hard, his adam's apple bobbing frantically in his throat. “I didn’t–”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t ask. My gaze flickered from his face to the body, then around the room. I just moved.
My boots made no sound on the linoleum. I knelt beside him.
I checked what I already knew. No breath. No movement. The skin felt cool already. The blood was still spreading. Close range. Messy. Uncontrolled.
I stood up. Looked around the room. My eyes scanned every corner. No one else. No signs of anyone coming back. Just this. Just us. The silence pressed in, broken only by the frantic rasp of Gator’s breathing.
Behind me, Gator shifted.
“I didn’t mean to–” he said again. “He– he came at me, I told him, I said– ” His voice trailed off.
“I know.” The words came out flat. They stopped him. Not because of what they meant, but because of how they sounded.
The sheer lack of emotion in my voice, the calm acceptance. He looked at me like he didn’t recognize the person standing there. Like he was waiting for something else. Panic. Fear. Anything that matched what was happening inside him. I gave him nothing.
“We need to move him,” I said.
He blinked. His eyes, though still wide, held a flicker of confusion. “What?”
“We need to move it,” I repeated.
He stared at me. At my hands, which remained steady. At the floor, where the dark stain continued its slow creep. At the man, now just a silent, inert form.
“I– I can’t– ” he shook his head hard, like he could knock the image out of his mind. “I can’t touch him.”
I walked past him, toward the back of the house. My steps were even, unhurried. Found what I needed without thinking. A rug. Old. Worn. Its pattern faded, the fibers matted with years of dirt. Heavy enough. I dragged it back into the room, the fabric scraping against the floor. Gator watched me the whole time. Silent now. Frozen. He watched everything I did.
I knelt down again, the rug now spread beside the body. The cold, lifeless weight of the man resisted for a moment, then, with a grunt of effort, I rolled him onto the rug.
The weight shifted awkwardly. Dead weight always did. Always heavier than it should've been. Gator made a noise behind me. A choked gasp. I ignored it. Once it was wrapped, it barely looked like a person anymore. Tied it off with what I could find, a length of frayed rope I pulled from a dusty corner. Then I stood. Looked at him.
“Gator.” Something in my voice landed. Not loud. Not forceful. Just certain. He pushed himself up slowly, like his body didn’t belong to him anymore, each movement stiff and uncoordinated. His hands were shaking so badly he wiped them against his pants before trying to grab the rug. He stepped forward. Stopped. Looked down at the shape on the floor.
“I didn’t–” he whispered again.
I grabbed one end of the rug, my grip firm. Waited. After a second, his hand, trembling still, reached out. He bent down, gripping the other side, his knuckles white with strain.
We carried him out like that. Through the house. Out the door. Across the yard. The sun hit us harder outside, too bright for what we were doing.
“Where are we taking him?” Gator asked.
I didn’t answer immediately. My gaze scanned the horizon. We carried him towards his patrol car and wrestled it into the trunk, the fabric scraping against the metal.
I got in the driver’s side. It felt wrong being there, like I had stepped into a space that belonged to him and him only. He went to the passenger, his movements jerky, uncoordinated. He couldn't seem to take the vape from his lips.
His fingers drummed a frantic rhythm on his knee, his eyes darting from the road to the rearview mirror. Fields and fences slid by outside.
We drove through the ranch and past the houses.
We pulled up to a windmill stock tank in the middle of nowhere. The tall, skeletal structure of the windmill stood against the vast sky, its blades turning with a slow creak. A huge metal tank, rusted and scarred, sat beside it.
“Stay here,” I said, already pushing the door open.
He got out anyway. His feet hit the gravel with a crunch. “Where are we?” he asked.
“Stay here,” I said again, my gaze unwavering.
“Your dad doesn’t want you involved in this.”
I began unloading the body from the trunk. It was heavy. I did what I could, my muscles straining under the weight. Until Gator came to help me anyway. His hands, though still trembling, reached for the other end of the rug.
“I said stay there.” My voice was sharper this time.
He didn’t. He helped me carry it the windmill, his breath coming in ragged gasps, his eyes wide and fixed on the ground ahead. We dragged the body closer, the rug scraping against the dry earth and positioned it at the edge of the metal tank.
The windmill turned above us, the slow creak filling the space where words should have been. I grabbed the metal bar beside the windmill and pulled. The stock tank shifted slowly across the tracks with a long, grinding scrape of metal, exposing the dark space beneath it inch by inch.
The smell hit immediately. The worst thing a human being could smell. Death. Decay. A putrid, suffocating stench that clawed at the back of the throat, thick enough to taste.
He nodded. Barely. His gaze was fixed on the dark opening, his face pale in the fading light.
“One.” My grip tightened on the rug.
His grip tightened on his end, his knuckles stark white.
We pushed. The weight tipped forward, a sudden, heavy lurch. Then disappeared.
A wet, muffled thud echoed from the darkness below, seeming to reverberate through the very ground.
Gator flinched like he’d been hit. I grabbed the metal bar beside the windmill and pulled hard. The stock tank groaned as it slid back across the tracks until it covered the opening again. We shoved it the last few inches into place. Done. Just like that.
For a second, neither of us moved.
The windmill kept turning. The sky was as wide as ever. Everything looked exactly the same.
I turned to him. He was taking a step back.
It wasn’t a controlled movement. More like his body rejected the space all at once, like something in him snapped a line and sent him stumbling. His boot caught uneven ground, and he nearly went down, hands shooting out to steady himself against nothing.
“Fuck–” The word broke out of him sharp and raw.
He turned away from the tank, fast, like if he kept looking at it he might see something move. His hands went straight back into his hair, gripping hard, fingers tangling, pulling. His shoulders rose and fell too quickly, breath coming in shallow, uneven bursts that didn’t seem to fill his lungs.
“I can’t–” he started, then cut himself off with a harsh exhale, like even forming the sentence was too much. He paced a few steps, then stopped. Then paced again, faster this time, boots grinding against the dirt.
“I can’t– I can’t–” The words kept repeating, thinner each time.
I stayed where I was for a second longer, hand still resting on the metal lever of the tank. Then I stepped forward, closing the distance between us slowly..
He didn’t respond. Didn’t look at me. Just kept pacing, tighter now, like the space around him was shrinking.
“He was–” Gator’s voice caught, snapped in half. He swallowed hard, jaw clenching. “He was talking.”
“He– he said something, I don’t even–” He let out a broken, breathless laugh that didn’t carry any humor. “I don’t even remember what he said.” His hands dropped from his hair just long enough to gesture. “I told him to stop. I told him– I told him–”
Silence fell between the words, heavy and unfinished.
The wind shifted, dragging the smell up from the seams of the tank again. Faint, but enough. Rot. Damp. Something old and wrong. It hit the back of the throat and stayed there.
Gator gagged. He turned away abruptly, doubling over, hands braced on his knees as his body tried to expel something that wasn’t there. Nothing came up. Just dry, violent retching, his whole frame shaking with it.
He spat to the side, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, breathing hard. His eyes were glassy now, unfocused, like they were trying to land somewhere and couldn’t.
I stepped closer. Not too fast. Not sudden.
“You just defended yourself,” I said.
He let out a sharp, disbelieving scoff. “That’s not–” He shook his head hard, cutting himself off. “That’s not what that was.”
His hands were shaking again. Worse now. Not just his fingers, his wrists, his arms, a tremor that ran all the way through him like something had lodged under his skin and wouldn’t settle.
He reached into his pocket, pulling out his vape. Fumbled it. Almost dropped it. Caught it again with a curse under his breath. Brought it to his lips.
The inhale was shaky. Uneven. The smoke came out in a thin, broken stream.
“Jesus,” he muttered, pacing again. “Jesus, I– I didn’t–”
He stopped suddenly. Looked at his hands.
Like he was seeing them for the first time.
There was still blood under his nails.
“Fuck–” he whispered, voice dropping into something smaller. “Fuck.”
He scrubbed his hands against his jeans, hard, like he could wipe it off, like friction alone could undo it.
It didn’t. Of course it didn’t.
I stepped in then. Close enough that he couldn’t ignore me anymore.
His eyes flicked up, but only for a second. Then away again, like holding eye contact might break something else.
“Look at me.” I said, firm this time.
His gaze locked onto mine. Wide. Unsteady. Searching for something, anything, to hold onto.
“You were just defending yourself.” I repeated.
He stared at me, breathing still too fast, like his body hadn’t caught up yet.
I held his gaze a second longer, making sure it stuck. Then I stepped back just enough to give him space again, not leaving, just… loosening the hold.
He dragged a hand down his face, rough, like he was trying to reset something. It didn’t work. Nothing about him reset.
“He looked at me,” he said suddenly.
The words came out quieter. Not frantic this time. Just… stuck.
“Right before.” His eyes unfocused again, drifting somewhere past me, back into it. “He looked at me like–” He swallowed. “Like he thought I wasn’t gonna do it.”
Something twisted in his expression. A flicker of something close to shame.
“I didn’t think I was gonna do it either.”
The windmill creaked overhead. Slow. Relentless.
I exhaled through my nose, steady.
“Does it–” He swallowed, voice tightening. “Does it get out of your head?” It was so quiet I almost didn’t catch it.
My gaze snapped back to him. He wasn’t looking at me now. Just standing there, staring at the ground, shoulders slumped.
I didn’t answer right away.
His mouth pressed into a thin line, like that silence told him everything he needed to know. “Right,” he muttered.
I stepped closer. His eyes lifted again, searching mine.
We stood there like that for a moment. The space between us filled with things neither of us needed to say out loud.
My gaze drifted past him, back toward the tank.
Toward what we’d just left under it.
A slow, cold anger settled low in my chest.
He knew Gator wasn’t ready for this.
He knew what this would do.
My jaw tightened slightly. Not enough for him to notice. Just enough that I felt it.
“He shouldn’t have sent you,” I said.
The words slipped out before I could stop them.
I looked back at him. My expression already neutral again.
But the thought didn’t leave.
It stayed there. Heavy. Sharp.
He shouldn’t have been here.
Gator exhaled slowly, the edge of panic finally starting to dull into something else. Not calm. Not even close. But… less sharp. Less immediate.
His shoulders dropped a fraction. Just a fraction.
I nodded once toward the car.
He didn’t argue this time.
We got back to the car and sat there in silence for a moment, the engine ticking softly beneath us, the wind whistling around us.
“What the fuck Gator.” I said as I lowered my head into the steering wheel. My voice was flat, devoid of anger, only a cold assessment.
“I– I–” he stammered, his words stumbling over each other. “You shot that one dude too.” He said, a desperate attempt to deflect, to share the burden. He was visibly shaken, his face pale, eyes still too wide.
“Why do you know about this place and I don’t?”
I looked at him then. Really looked. At the way his hands wouldn’t stop shaking. At the way his chest rose too fast. At the way his eyes refused to settle anywhere for long, darting from the windmill to the empty trunk where the body had been, like it might reappear.
“Your dad wants you clean,” I said. “That’s why he never brought you with us.”
The words settled between us, heavy and unyielding.
He leaned back against the seat, exhaling a thin stream of vapor through his nose. “So he really doesn’t trust me for anything, huh?”
“He wanted to protect you.”
For a while, neither of us spoke.
“I killed him,” he said, voice hollow, stripped bare of emotion.
Not a question. Not even a realization. Just… a fact he couldn’t hold properly, a truth too heavy for his hands.
He let out a broken laugh. He dragged both hands over his face, “Jesus,” he muttered. “Jesus, I– I’ve never even–.”
I didn't answer. My gaze remained fixed on him.
“You’re not even–” he looked at me suddenly. “You’re not even freaking out.”
I held his gaze. My expression remained neutral, unreadable. “No.”
I shrugged slightly. “Your dad started taking me with him when I was seventeen, and with Roy… I’ve seen worse.”
That landed. Harder than anything else. He stared at me like I had just said something he wasn’t supposed to hear.
Like something had slipped through a crack it wasn’t meant to, a glimpse into a world he knew existed but was never included.
The silence stretched, long and uncomfortable.
He didn’t say much on the drive. Sat in the passenger seat, hands clasped together like he was trying to keep them from moving. Every so often, his fingers would twitch, like they remembered something his mind was trying to forget. I kept my eyes on the road.
The land stretched out around us again, wide and open. The sun was starting to dip lower, casting long shadows across the fields.
It should’ve felt like the end of something. It didn’t. It felt like the beginning. Something quiet. Something irreversible.
I caught him once, looking at me. Not the way he usually did. Not sharp or teasing or hungry. Something quieter. Like he was trying to understand how I could still breathe normally after this.
When we pulled up to the ranch, everything looked the same.
The world continued its indifferent spin. Horses grazed in the distance. Fences stretched out into nothing. The house stood exactly where it always had. Untouched. Unchanged. I turned the engine off.
Gator didn’t move. He simply sat there, staring out the windshield.
“Hey,” I said, my voice quiet, cutting through the stillness.
He blinked. Slow. Like it took effort.
It wasn’t true. But it was what he needed.
We got out of the car and walked toward the house like we hadn’t just buried something that couldn’t be undone. Like we were still the same people who had left, untouched by the darkness we had just confronted.
At the door, he hesitated and looked back at me.
There was something different in his eyes now. Not fixed. Not healed. But… altered. Shifted. Like something had broken and left space behind it, a new emptiness where something else might grow.
“I–” he started. Stopped.
Whatever he was going to say, he didn’t. Didn’t need to. I understood it anyway. The way he looked at me. The way he stood there, waiting without asking.
He needed me. Not in the way he had before. Not in the dark corners, or the hidden places, or the spaces between rules. Something else. Something deeper. Something he couldn’t name yet.
I didn’t say anything. Just opened the door. Stepped inside. And he followed, a shadow at my heels.
Back turned. Standing at the counter, a broad, unyielding silhouette against the window. He didn’t turn when we walked in. Didn’t ask where I’d been. Didn’t say anything at all. The only sound was the faint clinking of ice against glass.
We stood there for a second, Gator close behind me, his breath shallow against my neck, his arms still slightly shaking. Waiting for something that didn’t come. The silence stretched, thick and heavy.
Then he turned. Not fast. Not sharp. Just… deliberate. Like he had all the time in the world.
His eyes didn’t go to me first. They went to Gator. Took him in.
The way he stood too stiff. The way his shoulders weren’t sitting right. The tremor still running through his hands, small but there if you knew where to look.
Roy’s gaze lingered there for a second longer than it should have.
And something in it settled.
Like a piece had fallen into place exactly where he expected it to.
“Everything go alright?” he asked.
Calm. Like he was asking about the weather.
Roy didn’t look back at him.
The silence stretched. Thick. Pressing.
“You handle it?” he said.
There was a pause. A long one.
His voice didn’t come back.
Roy watched him for a second.
Then, slowly, he looked at me again. My dress, stained. My hands, dirty. Exactly the way I had looked so many times before because of his demands.
“He does better with you here,” Roy said.
Just let the silence answer for me.
Something almost imperceptible shifted in his expression. Not pride. Not approval.
Gator shifted behind me, like he couldn’t stand in his own skin anymore.
Roy took a slow sip from his glass. Ice tapped softly against the side.
“You should get some rest,” he said.
Still not looking at Gator.
Still talking like it wasn’t about him at all.
We stood there another second.
My boots made no sound on the polished wood floor. Gator’s steps were hesitant, almost a shuffle, his gaze fixed on Roy’s back as if expecting it to erupt. But Roy remained a statue.
Up the stairs. The wood groaned softly beneath our weight. I'd never really been in his room before. I'd woken him up plenty of times, but I'd never crossed the doorway.
The room smelled faintly like stale sweet smoke.
His bed was made, which honestly surprised me. The window, slightly open, let in the evening breeze, stirring the faded curtains. Posters of half-naked girls, all curves and come-hither stares, plastered the walls, their glossy surfaces reflecting the dimming light.
“Very classy,” I murmured looking around the cluttered space. A stack of comic books lay on the nightstand, next to a half-empty can of soda. A pair of worn boots sat by the closet door. Gator came and stood beside me, his shoulder brushing mine.
I just stood there, trying to understand why coming back felt exactly like never leaving at all.
The floorboard behind us creaked.
I turned slightly. Gator didn’t. He remained frozen.
Roy stood in the doorframe. Not fully inside. Not fully out. Just there. Watching. His presence filled the space. The air in the room seemed to thicken, to hold its breath.
“Remember where you belong,” he said.
No anger. No force. Just… fact. An undeniable truth. But it still sent a shiver down my spine..
The words didn’t land hard. They didn’t need to. They settled into place like something that had always been there, a cornerstone of my existence.
Because there wasn’t anything else to do. No argument to be made. No escape route to be found.
He watched me for another second, his eyes, dark and unreadable, piercing through the dim light. Then he turned and walked away, his footsteps fading down the hall.
I felt Gator’s hand brushing mine, a light, hesitant touch, then he grabbed it. His fingers, still cool, intertwined with mine.
But he still didn’t look at me, his gaze fixed somewhere on the opposite wall, lost in a landscape of his own making.
I squeezed his hand. That’s when he looked at me, his eyes wide and unfocused, lost on something I couldn’t see, something beyond the walls of this room, beyond the present moment.
I knew why Roy did what he did.
He sent him alone because he knew exactly what would happen.
He sent him alone because he knew he wasn’t.
I turned to him fully and let go of his hand, sliding my arms around his shoulders and pulling him into me. My cheek pressed against his chest, his heartbeat still too fast beneath my ear. After a second, his arms came around me too, tightening slowly, like he needed to make sure I was really there.
We stood there for minutes, I don’t know how long.
I was holding his pain from this afternoon.
He was holding the girl that had gone through the same, over and over, since she was a teen.
When he finally took a step back, his eyes, though still clouded, held a flicker of something new, something that hadn’t been there before.
He grabbed my hand again, his grip firm, and led me to his bathroom. The door closed behind us with a soft click. He looked at me, a long, searching gaze. One of his hands drifted to my shoulder, drawing little circles on the bare skin exposed. Then he kissed it, once, a light brush of his lips, then again. His breath ghosted against my skin before his mouth moved up my neck. His hands, no longer trembling, lowered my dress straps. First the shoulders, then my arms, until my dress was a pool of fabric at my feet.
I grabbed the hem of his t-shirt and lifted it, my fingers brushing against the warm skin of his abdomen. He helped me by raising his arms, his eyes never leaving mine.
I looked at him, at his chest, the dusting of dark hair, the little trail leading down to his waist, a dark line disappearing beneath his jeans. Small, dark reddish smudges still stained his abdomen, stark against his pale skin, reminders of the afternoon. My hands went to his belt buckle, my fingers fumbling slightly, and undid it. He lowered his pants, his gaze still locked with mine, and stepped out of them.
We finished getting undressed, each movement slow and quiet. He peppered my shoulders with more kisses, his lips tracing the line of my collarbone, the curve of my neck. He came to my mouth, his head tilting, his eyes asking permission.
But I took a step back, then another, my bare feet cold against the tiled floor. He followed me until the back of my legs touched the cold porcelain of the bathtub.
We stepped inside. The cold ceramic sent a shiver through me. He reached for the faucet, twisting the handle. Water poured over us.
His hair fell across his face, plastered to his forehead. We couldn’t stop looking at each other, the water streaming between us, blurring the edges of the moment. Then I grabbed the sponge and squeezed a bit of soap onto it. The creamy lather bloomed under the spray. I reached for him, my hands moving with an instinctive gentleness, and washed away the bloodstains on his abdomen, the small, dark marks dissolving under my touch. He did the same with mine, his hands, my legs, my arms, washing away the dust and the unseen grime of the day. We leaned against each other while the water ran over us.
Then we stepped back into the bedroom, the air suddenly cool against our damp skin. He handed me one of his old Stark County Police t-shirts, soft and worn from years of use. I pulled it on, the oversized material falling past my hips. It smelled like him. Cedar and whatever cologne he always wore.
He grabbed my hand, his fingers intertwining with mine, and rested his forehead against mine.
“Stay,” he said, his voice barely audible above the drumming of my own heart. “Please.”
He led me to the bed, the mattress sinking softly under our combined weight. He pulled the thick quilt over us, tucking it around our shoulders.
Sleep didn’t come easy. It stayed just out of reach, hovering somewhere above me while I lay still, staring at the ceiling, replaying something I didn’t want to name.
That part had settled already, filed away somewhere practical and quiet.
Who was now spooned behind me, his chest pressed against my back, his arm draped possessively over my waist. I could feel the slow, steady rise and fall of his breathing.
How Roy had made him a part of his plan, without thinking about what it would cost him. The calculated cruelty of it, disguised as a lesson. Not for him. For me. A don't-leave-again lesson.
The memory came out of nowhere.
It had been the fifth time Roy took me with him.
Not the first. Not the second. By the fifth, you stopped pretending it was something else. The initial shock had worn off, replaced by a dull acceptance.
My father had done it. Quick. Clean. Like it was just another task that needed finishing, another loose end tied up. A brutal efficiency that left no room for sentiment.
Sitting at the table like he belonged there more than the man who owned the house. A cigar between his fingers.
He hadn’t looked at me when it happened. Hadn’t needed to. His gaze was fixed on the man.
“God gives us dominion,” he had said, almost conversational, like he was filling silence rather than explaining anything. His voice held the weight of absolute conviction. “Over land. Over beasts. Over those who forget their place in it.”
The man sat still on his couch, eyes wide and unseeing, the splatter on the wall behind him a grotesque bloom of red.
I had stood there. Not moving. Not reacting. Just… watching. Waiting for something to happen inside me. Something that didn’t. No tears. No scream. Just a hollow ache where something should have been.
My father had looked at me after, his eyes, usually so warm, now cold and assessing. Not checking. Not asking. Just measuring. Gauging my reaction, or lack thereof.
Roy had leaned back in his chair, exhaling smoke like a sigh
Just like that. No instruction. No guidance. Just expectation.
Something moved behind me.
A shift of weight. A breath catching wrong.
His arm tightened suddenly around my waist, pulling me closer against him, his body pressing into my back like he was trying to anchor himself to something solid. His fingers curled into the fabric of my shirt.
A small sound slipped out of him. Not a word. Something broken. Half-formed.
His face buried deeper into the space between my shoulder and neck, his breath warm and uneven against my skin.
Barely there. Slurred with sleep. Gone as soon as it came.
His grip didn’t loosen. It stayed.
Because I needed one second, just one, to remember where I was.
Not in that house. In that memory. Not with the blood on the walls and Roy watching me.
My hand moved over his. Not pulling away. Just… covering it. Pressing it lightly against me so he wouldn’t have to reach any further.
His breathing steadied. Not fully. Just enough.
Roy’s voice again, like it had never stopped.
And I did it. Cleaning every inch of the house. Every drop of blood I scrubbed away only made me think about Roy's approval. About how badly I used to crave it.
Because that was the only thing left to do.
I remembered the weight of the body. Heavier than it should have been. I remembered the way my hands didn’t shake. The way my breathing stayed steady. The way something inside me had settled instead of breaking.
That had been the moment. Not the first time. The fifth. The moment it stopped being something I was learning. And started being something I was.
I waited until we got back to our house before locking myself in the bathroom and leaning over the sink, the acid burning the back of my throat. I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror for days, couldn’t look at my hands when all I saw was blood on them, an invisible stain that no amount of scrubbing could remove.
Now I wasn't even sure that's what I wanted anymore.
The certainty I'd built my whole life around was starting to crack.
Morning came without asking.
The light slipped through the window slowly, turning the room from shadow into something softer. It crept across the walls until it reached Gator's face.
I shifted a little on the bed, my muscles stiff from the night.
Then I felt him, his hand, brushing my arm, a light touch, tracing a path up and down. His eyes, still heavy with sleep, fluttered open.
“I keep seeing it,” he said. “Every time I close my eyes. It’s just… it’s there.” His gaze, unfocused, stared at the ceiling.
I didn’t interrupt. Didn’t offer anything. Just listened. My hand reached for his, intertwining our fingers.
“I thought…” he let out a short breath, almost a laugh but not quite. “I thought I knew what this was. You know? The job. The whole thing. I thought I got it.” He turned his head slightly, his eyes finding mine.
“Then, you walked in,” he continued, shifting closer, his body pressed warmly against mine. “You saw it, and you just… you knew. What to do. What to say. You didn’t even,” he stopped again, searching for the words. “You didn’t even blink.”
I turned to face him, the quilt rustling softly as I shifted.
Silence stretched between us.
Neither of us felt the need to fill it.
“I keep thinking,” he said, quieter now. “What if you hadn’t come?”
One of his hands landed on my cheek, his thumb brushed slowly against my skin.
He looked at me. Really looked this time. Not at what I had done. Not at what I was. At me.
“You are going to be fine. Everybody here goes through that,” I said, my voice low.
A lie, perhaps, but a necessary one.
“I just wanted to handle it,” he said after a second, his gaze dropping to our intertwined hands. “On my own.”
There it was. The real thing. The pride, the desperate need for self-sufficiency and constant struggle to prove himself.
“I wanted to prove I could,” he continued, his voice barely audible.
He looked away, his jaw tightening slightly, a muscle working beneath his skin.
“I’m not him,” he said, almost to himself. “I know that. I’m never gonna be him.”
I also knew that. I had always known that.
Gator, for all his bluster and attitude, had something in him the rest of us didn’t. Not innocence exactly. That had been beaten out of all of us a long time ago. But there was still a softness to him, buried deep, something untouched.
Roy didn’t have that. My father didn’t either.
Maybe they had once. Maybe everyone did at some point. But whatever part of a person hesitated before hurting someone, before taking more than they needed, before turning everything into power, men like them had carved it out of themselves years ago.
I saw it in the small things. The way he looked relieved instead of proud when things ended without blood. The way he reached for me without thinking, gentle before possessive. The way he still cared what people thought of him, like some part of him wanted to be seen as good because some part of him still was.
He played at being his father sometimes. Wore the badge, copied the voice, the posture, the confidence. But it always felt a little rehearsed, like a boy trying on clothes too big for him.
Gator still struggled with it, even when he pretended he didn’t.
He could follow ugly things. He could justify them. He could stand too close to them for too long.
But I didn’t think he would ever become the kind of man who stopped feeling them altogether.
I rested my hand against his cheek, my fingers tracing the faint stubble along his jawline. He looked at me again, his eyes searching mine.
I was close enough to catch every little detail. The slight redness in his eyes. The tension still sitting on his shoulders. The way he was trying to hold himself together in a way that didn’t quite work anymore.
The words were simple. Unadorned. But they landed. They settled into the quiet space between us.
He exhaled slowly. Like something in him had been waiting to hear that.
He got closer, his face inches from mine, our lips brushing.
His forehead rested lightly against mine.
Then, almost as a whisper, “I need you here,” he said.
I closed my eyes for a second. Not because of him. Because of what the words did. How easily they fit into something I hadn’t questioned, a pre-existing space in my heart I hadn’t known was there.
When I opened them again, I nodded once. That was enough. For now.
We stayed like that. Just the silence between our eyes and lips, the quiet communion of two souls finding solace in each other. It wasn’t empty. It felt like something settling into place. Aligned. Ready to become something else.
The rest of the day disappeared inside that room.
Neither of us said it out loud, but neither of us wanted to leave it either.
Outside, life carried on like nothing had happened. Distant truck engines. Horses. Doors opening and closing downstairs. The low hum of voices drifting faintly through the floorboards.
But inside his room, everything felt suspended.
He got up once sometime in the afternoon, only because I noticed him staring toward the bathroom for too long.
Not restless. Just thirsty.
The mattress shifted beneath me as he slid out of bed, moving slowly like his body still belonged to somewhere else. I watched him disappear into the bathroom wearing only his boxers, one hand dragging tiredly over his face before the door creaked open again a few seconds later.
He came back with two glasses of water balanced carefully in one hand.
I took mine without speaking.
The glass felt cold against my palm. Condensation gathered instantly against my fingers, dripping slowly onto the oversized t-shirt hanging off my thighs. He sat back down beside me, shoulders brushing mine as he drank half the glass in one go, like he hadn’t realized how thirsty he was until now.
Neither of us mentioned food for hours.
Not until the light outside shifted softer and gold spilled across the floorboards.
“You hungry?” he asked eventually.
I looked toward the bedroom door automatically.
Everything waiting outside this room.
Something small pulled at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile.
Later, while he sat against the headboard, I reached toward the stack of things cluttering his nightstand. Old comic books, bent at the corners. Records half shoved beneath each other.
I pulled one of the comics free and raised an eyebrow at the cover.
He glanced over, smoke drifting from his mouth slowly.
I looked back at the ridiculous cover art, all exaggerated muscles and blood and bad printing ink.
“All that pretending to be dangerous and this is what you read?”
That finally got an actual smile out of him. Brief. Crooked. Gone almost immediately after.
And for a second, sitting there wrapped in his t-shirt while late sunlight bled gold through the curtains, he didn’t look like Roy’s son.
Just a boy trying very hard not to fall apart.
The quiet settled back in after that. Him stretched beside me, one arm across my waist like he was afraid I might disappear if he loosened his grip too much.
Sometimes he would fall quiet for so long I thought he’d finally fallen asleep, only for his fingers to suddenly tighten against me again.
Once, I looked up and realized he wasn’t even looking at me. He was staring at the ceiling, jaw tight, eyes distant.
“You okay?” I asked softly.
His jaw flexed once like he was trying to force himself back under control.
Later, we showered again because he said he could still smell it on his hands.
I cleaned the blood from beneath his nails while he stood there silently watching me do it, his shoulders tense beneath the steam.
After that, we climbed back into bed again.
He barely let go of me after that.
Every time I shifted, his hand found me again.
Like he needed the reminder.
The next day, we didn’t leave the room until mid-day.
Before going out the door, he grabbed my waist and turned me around, his hands firm against my skin. He pulled me close, his lips finding mine in a proper kiss, the first one in days. It was deep, urgent, a desperate claim, a taste of comfort and something new, something that promised a different kind of future.
I smiled at him. A real smile. Then I headed downstairs.
Sitting in his usual chair, boots planted firmly on the wood, hands resting on his knees like he had been waiting for something. Or someone. His gaze was fixed on the horizon, but I felt it shift as I emerged from the house.
I didn't say anything, just walked past him. The porch boards creaked under my boots. As I reached the last step, his voice cut through the stillness.
“I knew you would come back.”
I stopped. My hand, resting on the porch railing, tightened. I turned to look at him, my eyes meeting his.
The words tasted sour on my tongue. I had never spoken to him like that, not with such blatant defiance. I looked at him another second before walking away.
His eyes followed me. I could feel them on the back of my neck. Like this had gone exactly the way he'd wanted.
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