Page 76 of Virago

~oOo~

Gia was still on the sofa, still reclining in her father’s arms. Tasha wasn’t there anymore, or Lilli. Only father and daughter—a father who knew how to be a parent, and a daughter who knew how to handle her own shit.

As Zaxx stood there, feeling like an intruder in his own living room, Gia said something to her father, a whisper too soft to carry the words farther than Isaac’s ear. He nodded and pressed a lingering kiss to her head. Then he eased out from under her. When she turned to sit up straight, Isaac pulled the coffee table close and propped her injured leg up on sofa pillows, then drew a hospital blanket over her.

Zaxx watched all that like a robot on standby, not moving, not blinking, maybe not breathing.

When Isaac headed to the door, he stopped and set a hand on Zaxx’s shoulder. “Light will come again,” he said. “Always does.”

He walked out the door, and then Zaxx and Gia were alone.

Finally, he found her eyes. Bright green and soft with concern. With one of those sad smiles everyone was wearing today, she patted the cushion beside her, inviting him to take a seat on his own sofa—the one stained with his sister’s blood, under a wall painted with her rapist’s.

Zaxx went, and he sat.

They sat side by side, not talking, until Zaxx thought of something to say. “Zelda said you killed them.”

She didn’t answer, so he turned to look at her. She was pale, with dark smudges beneath her eyes, but she was calm and composed. Her expression was compassion, not pain. She nodded.

He looked at her legs. Isaac had pulled a cover over her, but he remembered the bandaging that covered most of her thigh. “They hurt you.”

“One of them got off a shot, but it went clear through and missed bone. Tasha doesn’t want me to do it for a couple weeks, but I can walk on it, a little. It’ll heal fine. Just another addition to my catalogue of scars.”

Zaxx nodded. Then the magnitude of what she’d done for Zelda, for him, hit him fully. “Thank you. For everything.” He locked onto her eyes, trying let her see how deeply his feelings ran, how truly thankful he was. And how sorry.

She picked up his hand and squeezed.

Zaxx shifted his fingers, sliding them between hers, and held on.

They sat side by side in quiet for a while. Slowly, his brain began to sort out the information his senses were uploading. The long, bloody smear on his kitchen floor. Two chairs of his dinette upended.

That bloody sheet covering a lump on the living room floor. The way people covered a dead body.

But it wasn’t person-sized. It didn’t make sense.

And then it did. But no—they wouldn’t—why would they—

“Doof?” The name came from his mouth like a plea.

“I’m so sorry,” Gia whispered. She brought his hand to her chest. “I found him there when I came in. My dad covered him up.”

Doof? He’d lost Doof?

He hadn’t thought about his dog since he’d carried Zelda to his truck last night. He supposed his brain had decided that Trudy was taking care of Doofus and he didn’t need to worry about him—but that had not been true. Doofus had been here, alone and unprotected.

Zaxx came to a creaky stand and walked stiff-limbed to that lump under the bloody sheet. There, he dropped to his knees. He pulled the sheet back and found his dopey, sweet, bouncy mutt, his best friend, his most constant companion.

His dog lay stiff and cold in a congealed pool of blood. Zaxx didn’t bother to look for a wound, to understand how he’d died. It didn’t matter. He was dead, he’d obviously been killed, and the bastard who’d done it was dead. Zaxx knew all he needed to know.

Shifting to sit on the floor, he lifted the rigid body of his sweet boy and set him on his lap. Then he wrapped his arms around him as tightly as he could, buried his face into fur turned to spikes by dried blood, and sobbed.

He didn’t care who might be a witness to his grief. He held his dog and released everything he’d been feeling for the past twelve hours, everything he felt right now, in this moment of comprehending the depth of his loss, the extent of his failure, the consequences of his mistakes.

Until he had no more breath, no more tears, no more fury, he cried.

~oOo~

Eventually, wrung out and weary, he lifted his head. Darwin was sitting beside him—not touching, not talking, simply sitting there, ready to be support if Zaxx needed it.

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