Page 50 of Boy Blue
There was Nimble and Star to consider, as well. Nimble, who had been left behind in some town I didn’t know the name of, glaring at me as the train pulled away as though I’d tried to murder him. His duffel had been in my grip, but hitched aroundthe top of the ladder in such a way that meant I couldn’t throw it to him. His glare in the snow-filled air had said everything. I’d committed the worst betrayal: keeping his stuff.
As for Star, he had been on the train I’d fallen off of, and the train was long gone. Days long gone. How long had he stayed aboard before getting off? Or had he stayed and was at the coast by now? Either way, he was on his own in a big world that had no patience for boxcar boys, let alone sensitive ones with big eyes and a backstory so scary he never really shared it with us.
None of us had shared much about our pasts. We didn’t know each other’s real names, so there was no way I could find either of them. To say sorry. To make amends. To help them each find their own place.
I’d never thought I was a bad person, but the idea of this, of not being able to help, made me a careless, shitty person. Made me realize I was one.
“Don’t cry,” Wolfe’s voice said above me. “Please don’t cry. We’ll fix it. Whatever it is, we’ll fix it.”
I hadn’t realized I had been. He tugged me out of the kitchen chair and sat down in it, pulling me onto his lap. His arms went around me, a warm band of comfort and strength.
I buried my face in his neck and stayed there, trying my best to stop the tears. I was not a child. I was nineteen. I’d experienced the world in a way that nobody should have to. And after everything, I’d landed in a safe place. But still, I couldn’t stop.
“My sweet Blue,” Wolfe said, whispering in my ear, stroking my back, one arm around my middle. “You’re okay. I’ve got you. You’re okay.” He kissed my temple, his mouth staying there, against my skin, a warm brand.
I’d been falling for years and years, tumbling through a pitch black life, and had, somehow, miraculously, landed in this place where someone tended to my small wounds like they mattered,and held me now, crying like a messy, dramatic three-year-old, like I was the most important thing in his world.
Wolfe held me close, and though he’d not said the words, it felt like how I’d always imagined love would feel.
CHAPTER 22
wolfe
The weight had been lifted from me. The secret. The lie I’d been keeping to myself because someone on the internet told me it was better to let a person’s memories come back all on their own. Doing that to Blue, even with the best of intentions, had been a bit like slicing my finger on the small lace cutter, producing a strip of human flesh, exposing raw flesh beneath, day after day.
At least it had been, but now, as I held Blue in my arms, comforting him as I held him on my lap, his hip bones pressing into my thighs, was the only weight I was carrying now. And it was effortless.
Another weight had been added in its place. With his memory back, Blue would remember. We’d had sex before he’d known who he was, a non-consensual act at the very least. I needed to make amends, to make sure he was okay, and I would when he was settled in his skin.
He might also want more than Diamond Willow had to offer. Would want more than five acres of wild land and a view of a river beyond bare-limbed cottonwood trees.
He was used to better than just making do because there was no more milk in the fridge and no easy corner store to get itfrom. Or, in Blue’s case, there was no staff member to fetch it for him. Only me, operating on a shoestring, working with plastic threads to make cheap items for a church bazaar.
Even if Blue didn’t want to go back to his family, he would want to go somewhere else where life was easier. Wouldn’t he?
When Blue shifted to get up, I let him go from my arms, though part of me wanted to hunker down and hold on, to protect him from the family that was still looking for him. I knew I needed to get used to the way he looked at me, his expression carefully still, those blue eyes of his beneath dark brows, taking in his surroundings with the preexisting judgment he’d been raised with.
The house in Richmond cost nearly three-million dollars, in keeping with all the other properties in the area. People connected to DC and the racing farms. People who could find him and take him from me.
I wouldn’t let them. It was my bounden duty to never let them. They didn’t deserve him after what they’d done to him. But if he wanted to leave, I would let him.
Blue looked pale, so I stood up and went to him, where he leaned against the sink counter.
“Do you want that Tylenol?” I asked him, the question inane amidst his earth-shattering revelation, my hands going to his hips, fingers catching in the wrinkles in his t-shirt.
“No,” he said, shaking his head. Studying me. Gaze traveling the length of my body. Like he was going through some kind of checklist to figure out who I was. His brow furrowed. “It’s like there’s two of you, one superimposed over the other. Two of everything.”
“I know the feeling,” I said, not quite making a little joke out of it. “Let me make you something to eat,” I said. “We’ve got plenty. I’ll whip you up a BLT.”
I fed him. Fed myself. Cleaned up the melting snow. We did the dishes together. Blue’s fingers paused over each gesture, the washcloth over the edge of a plate, holding the rim of a glass under warm running water. Like he was learning himself all over again.
We let the dishes dry on a clean towel and bundled up to go to the workshop because I knew from my own experience that work, something to focus on, was sometimes the best cure. We focused on the template for which colors would go where.
I checked online for the status of our paint order and our stamp order and showed Blue how the small lace cutter worked. And how, when I’d cut through enough rawhide, what I would do with it. The pictures I showed him on the internet of handmade hackamores didn’t do them justice.
“You’d have to feel that kind of hackamore in your hand to know the workmanship that went into it,” I said.
“Will you let me help?” he asked.
