Page 189 of The Clinch
That should be enough.
It is enough.
Still, the questions burn anyway.
Is she crying or has she gone cold?
Is she shaking or perfectly still in that way she gets when the pain goes too deep?
Did she let Eden touch her?
Did she say my name?
Did she look back?
Did she?—
I cut it off.
Jessica watches me long enough to make the point. “You want me to keep an eye on things?”
Meaning Liz.
Meaning through Eden, through Joy, through the network of women who can be there for her without making it feel like surveillance.
I think about it.
About saying yes.
About taking the offer and dressing it up as love.
About convincing myself that checking on her from a distance would somehow be different from every other time I tried to solve first and ask second.
Then I shake my head. “No.”
Jessica’s brows lift a fraction.
“If she needs something, she knows where to find me.”
The words scrape on the way out.
“Okay.” She pushes off the doorframe. “For what it’s worth, you handled that the right way.”
I almost laugh. “The right way would’ve been four years earlier.”
She doesn’t answer that. After she leaves, the silence comes back.
I stare at my knuckles.
Without the gloves, they look too ordinary. Tape. Swollen joints. Short nails. A faint crescent of red I missed near the cuticle of my thumb.
Men like me like to pretend hands are simple.
Wrap them. Use them. Break what needs breaking.
That’s a lie.
Hands hold things. Build things. Ruin things.
