Page 25 of Tortured Whispers
“I know,” he muttered. Then we sat there in silence.
**
We moved in silence like that for days. We spoke when necessary but we were too shell-shocked for anything else. I knew closure would come after the funeral but I wasn’t looking forward to it.
The days that led up to saying that final goodbye shifted into a mind-numbing blur that I’d never be able to fully recall. I didn’t know what I ate, how I got dressed or what I wore. I couldn’t recall getting makeup work from school or if I’d spoken on the phone to anyone.
The only things that remained ever-present were the water and the sinking feeling.
Once the day of my father’s funeral finally arrived and I wore my solemn black dress and dropped a single rose into his casket, I thought I would feel better. I thought maybe I’d get some kind of reprieve from the constant drowning sensation once he’d been lowered into the ground but I didn’t. I wanted Cease to work his magic and pull me out of it but it seemed like he was drowning too.
After the funeral was done and the last extended family member was gone, I put the casseroles in the fridge at Cease’s new house. He stood in the kitchen staring at me once I finally stopped moving. I didn’t see him because I was busy nibbling on my sleeve and looking down at my phone, but I felt him.
Whenever he looked at me, my skin got hot. Not hot like being outside in July but hot from the inside out. Hot like having a fever. Only the cure for this fever was more sickness.
“Aside from the obvious, how are you feeling, Brook?” I didn’t speak. I only shrugged my shoulders in response. I didn’t know how to speak to him anymore.
Someone that once saved me from myself, needed saving. He was sad and he was withdrawn. I was back to feeling alone and I didn’t know how to tell him that without crying. I was so tired of crying.
“I know I haven’t been a good source of strength for you lately,” he confessed with a grimace. I glanced at him and listened for him to go on. “I want to fix that. Tell me how, Brook.” His sincerity gripped me somewhere deep that I thought would be permanently dead after they closed my father’s casket.
I looked at Cease and pulled in a long breath. I said the only words that were true no matter what, “I can’t bweathe without you” I tapped my chest and tears filled my eyes making everything blurry.
In the next blink, Caesar’s hands were on my hips. He pulled me against him in a hug that I needed so, so much. “I’m not going anywhere, Brook. I know I’ve been in my own head this past week but I’m not going to leave you out here alone. You’ll stay with me until you graduate then we’ll discuss what you want to do after that.” His fingers drew invisible loops on my lower back and it made the space around me squeeze in tighter.
Goddammit.
I still wanted him so bad I could taste it on every taste bud.
“I want to stay here. I mean…until I can get a job and…” My words were disjointed but Caesar understood. He always understood.
“Brooklyn, you can stay here as long as you want. I’ll have you moved in by the end of the week.” His lips pressed against my forehead and my lungs felt free and clear for the first moment in days.
**
Guilt trickled down into my belly as I laughed and ate dinner with Caesar that night. I shouldn’t have felt happy in any respect. I buried my father hours ago when the sun was high in the sky. Now was not the time to laugh and eat like life was okay.
It wasn’t.
“Worry about the dishes in the morning. We need rest. You want the guest room tonight or…you wanna sleep with me?” His words came out sheepish but they set me on fire.
“You,” I said instantly. I hated sleeping alone. I needed Caesar’s closeness. I needed him.
The silence that filled the room while we slid into bed after taking showers and brushing out teeth was different than the silence we’d endured all week. This silence was thick with something else. Something weighing down the spaces between the lines.
Still, I laid in bed with Caesar, telling myself nothing was wrong. I was his niece and I needed him. I needed his comfort and love.
That was it.
I soaked in the feeling of his cool sheets against my warm skin and tried not to look at his sculpted pecs and defined biceps in the tank top he wore. “Come here,” he demanded in a low voice.
It wasn’t a harsh command but it was rough and it held more than an uncle calling his niece over for a hug. I slid close and his strong arm snaked around me, nearly sucking the breath from my chest.
“I want you to make me a promise, Brook,” he tipped my chin up so that we locked gazes. I would have promised him anything in the world right then.
“Okay, what is it?” I asked.
“Promise me you won’t cut. I’ll sleep beside you and give you whatever you need. Just stop.”
