Page 68 of Hold On to Me
"Was she?" Star's voice is a thread.
"She was protecting the operation. You were making me visible. You were making me... distracted. You were making me someone who calculates how long a coffee stays warm and brings it in a guest mug because the staff cups are too thin." My jaw clenches again. Unclenches. "She told me loving you would get you killed like it got my father killed, and I believed her because my father is dead and I was—-"
The word sticks. Not a stammer. A wall. A thirty-four-year-old man hitting a word he's never spoken out loud to anyone, a word that doesn't exist in the operational vocabulary, a word that has no place in the mouth of the Almazov who makes problems disappear.
"You were what?" Star whispers.
"Afraid."
The word falls out of me like a stone dropping down a well. Heavy. Final. Irretrievable. And the sound it makes when it hits is the sound of Star's breath catching, a small sharp intake that she tries to swallow and can't, and her hand is still at her mouth and her eyes are spilling now, she's lost the battle, the tears are running down her face and she's not wiping them and she's not looking away.
"You were afraid," she repeats, and her voice is so small, so bewildered, as if the concept of me being afraid of anything is something she can't fit into the shape of the man she knows. "Of me?"
"Of losing you. Of loving you and having someone take you from me like they took him. Of being the reason you—-" My voice goes hoarse. Just goes. Drops out from under me mid-sentence like a floor giving way. I stop. I breathe. My hands are shaking openly now and I've stopped trying to hide it. "I closed that door to keep you safe and I know, I know it wasn't safety, it was cowardice, and you knocked on my door and asked what you did and the answer was nothing, Star, you did nothing, you did absolutely nothing wrong—-"
"Then why did you let me think I did?"
Her voice. Oh God. Cracked open and bewildered, the voice of a girl who after two weeks of standing at empty counters and putting cedarwood at the back of shelves and eating bread rolls alone, still doesn't understand what she did to deserve a closed door. Not performing hurt. Actually hurt. Actually confused. A twenty-year-old girl who's run the equation over and over in her head and it doesn't balance and she can't make it balance and it's been eating her alive.
"Because I'm a coward." My voice is wrecked and I don't fix it. "Because it was easier to let you hurt than to tell you the truth. Because the truth is that I love you and that terrifies me more than anything I've done in thirty-four years."
Her whole body reacts. A flinch that runs through her from her shoulders to her knees, and her hand drops from her mouth and both hands go to her stomach, pressing down, like you'd press a wound, and she bends forward slightly and makes a sound that I will hear for the rest of my life. Not a sob. Smaller. The sound of a girl who just heard the thing she needed to hear and it hit her so hard she can't stand straight.
"Don't," she pleads, and she's crying openly now, both hands pressed to her stomach, bent forward, tears falling on the thin carpet. "Don't say that to me if you're going to take it back. Don't say that and then close another door. I can't—-I can't do the door again, I can't—-"
"I'm not closing any door." I cross the distance. Not striding, not commanding, just moving, because my body won't stay fifteen feet from hers while she's bent over and crying, it won't, it refuses, and I'm in front of her before I've decided to move. My hands reach for her face and they're shaking and she can seethem shaking and I don't care. "I'm not closing anything. I'm here. Look at me."
She looks up. Her face is a wreck. Blotchy and wet and her nose is running and her eyelashes are clumped together and she looks twelve again, she looks like the girl Mr. Green described, the girl who looks too young to be working here, and she's crying in a corridor in her spa uniform and my hands are trembling against her jaw and I'm the Almazov who makes problems disappear and I can't make my hands stop shaking.
"I love you." Low. Hoarse. Dragged out of the place I've been keeping it like a splinter being pulled. "I've loved you since you pressed your fingers to the gallery glass and saidit's beautifullike the word cost you something."
"Stop," she whispers, but she's leaning into my palms, her wet face pressing into my shaking hands, and her eyes are closed and the tears are running over my fingers and she's not pulling away.
"I've loved you since the corridor. Since the cedarwood. Since your hands found my scars and didn't flinch."
"I can't—-my planner—-" A hiccup. A sound that would be a laugh if it weren't soaked in tears. "My planner doesn't have an entry for this, I don't know what to—-I don't know where to put this—-"
"You don't have to put it anywhere."
"I put everything somewhere, that's what I DO, I file things and I schedule things and you—-" Her hands come up and grab my wrists, both of them, her fingers wrapping around the bones, holding on, and her grip is strong, her four-hundred-euro-an-hour grip, and she's holding my wrists like they're the railingon the upper deck and the ship is tilting. "You broke my filing system. You broke all of it. I don't have CATEGORIES for this—-"
"Good."
"It's not GOOD, it's terrifying, I had a system and it WORKED and then you spoke my name on a massage table and the whole thing crashed and I've been trying to reboot it for two weeks and it won't—-"
"Star."
"—-and I put the cedarwood at the back of the shelf with the label turned away and that was supposed to help and it DIDN'T because I could still smell it and I kept thinking about your scars and whether Curtis was using the right pressure on your lower back because he goes too deep too fast, he doesn't warm the tissue first, and I was lying in my bunk at three AM worried about your SCAR TISSUE while you were—-while I was—-"
She's spiralling. The planner-brain has come back online and it's misfiring in every direction and she's crying and talking about Curtis's pressure technique and the cedarwood label and her filing system and she can't stop, the words are pouring out of her like they always pour out of her when she's feeling too much, in these long breathless cascades that build and build, and I'm standing here with my shaking hands on her wet face and she's holding my wrists and she's worried about my scar tissue.
She was lying in her bunk at three AM worried about my scar tissue.
I'm done. Whatever was left of the wall, whatever composure I was holding, it's gone. My forehead drops to hers and my eyesburn and my throat closes and I'm pressing my face against hers and I can feel her tears and mine mixing on the skin between us and I can't speak. For the first time in this corridor I can't speak, because she was worried about my scars, she was lying in the dark wondering if another therapist was being careful enough with the burns on my lower back, and she's telling me this while crying and I can't—-
"I love you," she chokes. Small and broken and almost inaudible. "I love you and I'm so angry at you and I love you and I don't know how to be both of those things at the same time and my planner doesn't COVER this—-"
I kiss her.
