Page 50 of Rooke
Soames shakes his head. “A nephew wouldn’t look quite as terrified. Only a great deal of love can make a man panic like that.” He turns, about to leave, but then he appears to think twice about it, hovering at the edge of the curtain. “I dated a woman who was older than me once.Significantlyolder. Everyone said it would never work. They gave us six months. A year, tops. I’m glad to say they were all very wrong.”
“You made it work?”
He smiles. “We’ve been married fourteen years now.”
He leaves just as Rooke arrives. Soames was right: he does look panic stricken. He’s pale and drawn, and his usual arrogance has fled him. He barely even sees the doctor as he moves past him. Sitting on the edge of the bed, Rooke interlaces his fingers together in his lap, staring down at his hands. He sighs heavily. “I’ve been thinking,” he says. “While they were treating you this whole time, I’ve been sitting in the waiting room, thinking.”
“Sounds stressful,” I whisper.
“Yeah. It was. See, we’ve been almost living together for the past two weeks, and I’ve felt shitty. I know something I shouldn’t know. You’re going to be mad when I tell you what it is I know, and you’re going to tell me you don’t want to see me again.”
Dread sinks through, heavy as a stone. What is he talking about? There’s only one thing he could possibly have found out that would cause me to react like that, though. I know as much already. I just don’t want to admit it to myself, because that will mean there will be no more sanctuary in Rooke. He’s been separate from anything related to my past this whole time. That has been a blessed relief. When I look at him, I haven’t seen someone who feels sorry for me, someone who’s potentially judging me as a bad parent. He’s just been a guy, and I’ve just been a girl. Now, though…
Rooke lifts his right hand and slowly spell-signs Christopher’s name.
“How do you know how to do that?” I ask in a flat voice.
“You can learn anything on Youtube. Google told me the rest. About you. About the accident. About you losing your son.”
A heaviness hangs in the air. You could cut through it with a goddamn chainsaw. Neither of us says anything for a while, which gives me time to compile my thoughts. He’s right: my immediate response to the fact that he knows about my son is to scream at him. Tell him he has no right knowing about this. Tell him that I want him to go, to leave my life and never call me or show up on my doorstep again. Maybe that’s what I would have done a couple of months ago. Even three weeks ago. Since I met him, though, things have been different. He’s challenged me so many times to approach my life in another way. To move beyond what I think I should or shouldn’t do. And more than that. He’s shown me that other people aren’t necessarily always who you think they are.Theydon’t always conform to society’s idea of who they should be, or howtheyshould act. I count to ten very slowly in my head. I’ve only reached seven when I feel his fingers tracing down the side of my face.
“I’m not saying you should have told me. I’m saying youcantell me,” he whispers. “Anything. I told you the worst thing about me when I would never normally breathe a word about my extracurricular activities. I wanted you to know the darkest part of my life, because I already knew about yours and it didn’t feel right. Unfair, somehow. But you listened to me, and you didn’t turn me away. I knew you wouldn’t, because this isn’t something you turn your back on, Sasha. There’s nothing that can turn this off now. This thing between us…you’re afraid of it. The moment you stop fearing this and you accept it, you’ll be able to see just how fucking beautiful it is. And the moment you accept it will also be the moment you don’t have to carry this shit on your own anymore.”
I know I’m about to cry. The second I open my mouth and try to speak, my throat will close up and I’ll choke on the words. I still try, though. “It’s not that easy. It’s not something I can just hand off to someone else, so they can carry half the load for me, Rooke. This is ingrained deep inside me now. It would be like trying to give away half of my soul.”
“I’ll take a part of your soul,” he says quietly. “Give me the wounded part. Give me the part that hurts you every time you breathe. Give me the part that feels so heavy you just don’t think you can carry it anymore. I’ll take care of it for you.”
I feel like I’ve been struck with something hard and blunt. Rooke just stares at me with a solid, steady look on his face, and I can feel my eyes stinging, my throat closing up. He means it. I read it on every line of him; he would carry my pain if he could. I have no idea why, but he would. Even Andrew couldn’t do that for me. I suppose it makes sense that he couldn’t—he had his own pain to carry, after all. Kika, Kayla, Ali and Tiffanie all tried to help with the load, but they all soon bowed under the pressure of that kindness. Something in the way Rooke’s so fixed on me right now, the tight clench of his jaw and the set of his shoulders, tells me he could do it though. If I let him, if I knew how, he would carry every single hurt I possess, until I barely even felt them anymore.
“I can’t do this,” I whisper. “It’s too much.”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I can try. You couldletme try. What have you got to lose?”
“EVERYTHING!” I take a raw breath in and I choke on the air flowing into my lungs. God, I can’t cope with this. It’s too hard. It’s too much. I cover my face with my hands, embarrassed that I’m suddenly crying.
“Why would you lose everything?” Rooke asks.
“Because. If I trust you, if I make myself vulnerable, I have to let down the walls I’ve spent so long constructing. And if it doesn’t work out between us, if I trust you and you let me down, or if I fuck things up, there’s no way I’ll be able to put that wall back up again. No way in hell. It took too much to build it the first time around. I have nothing left, Rooke. Seriously. I have nothing left.”
*****
I hate being carted out of the hospital in a wheelchair. It magnifies my humiliation to unbearable degrees. It feels like everyone is looking at me, watching, judging me. Rooke’s been quiet for a long time. He’s simmering; I can feel the annoyance and disappointment rolling off him like heat from a sidewalk in summer, and it’s making things really uncomfortable. I told him he didn’t need to stop and drive me back to my place, and he just grunted. He spoke to the nurse about what care I might need at home—lots of water, lots of rest—and then he pointedly ignored me.
It’s raining outside. Big, fat, heavy droplets of water that explode every time they hit the sidewalk. The sky looks grim and serious, much like Rooke as he helps me to my feet and returns the wheelchair to an orderly by the door.
“Wait here,” he says. He doesn’t look back at me as he jogs off into the rain, presumably looking for a taxi. I watch him go, his hair instantly wet as he crosses the blacktop, and I can’t help but look around, searching for an exit from this situation. If I slip away now, it’s unlikely he’ll follow me home. After picking me up off the floor and getting me to the hospital, he shouldn’t want to see me ever again. Me vanishing would be the perfect way out for him.
He’s disappeared. I crane my neck, trying to spot him in the increasingly hard rain, but he’s the one who’s vanished.He’sthe one who’s ducked away in the dusk.
I step back, away from the curb, as a black sedan rolls up in front of the hospital entrance. The window buzzes down, and then Rooke hops out of the driver’s seat and comes around the vehicle to open the passenger door for me.
I just stare at the car and at him, processing the fact that he has a car. “You borrowed this?” I ask.
He cocks his head, looking at the car. He’s tired, though. He’s not really seeing it. “In the most illegal sense of the word, yes,” he confirms.
