Page 26 of The Darkness Within

Embarrassment and shame drown my voice.

“What were you doing?” he repeats.

Hot tears gather in my eyes. I’ve never hated myself more than I do at this moment. “Nothing! I was just trying to… He made me promise I wouldn’t leave him… But they took him from me, when we were rescued, they took him from me and separated us, and I never saw him again. I just… I needed to…”

Brewer slips his hand in mine. “You needed to feel close to him. You needed the solace of thinking he was still with you.”

Nodding, I swipe the tears from my cheeks with the hand he’s not holding. “What did you do with him?”

“It was just a bunch of his clothes stuffed into his uniform. I washed everything and folded it and packed it away in a box. When you’re ready, you can give it back to his mother.”

My Gutierrez lump is gone. He’s truly gone. And now I’m completely alone.

“You can’t go back there, Nash. You can’t live alone right now.”

I know he’s right, but I can’t make sense of anything right now. My head feels overloaded, and I just can’t think.

“I want you to come live with me. Just for a little while until your blood pressure lowers and you’re feeling stronger and able to make better decisions.”

Move in with him? Is he fucking kidding me? Move in with the man who’s consumed my thoughts since the moment I met him? Sign me the fuck up.

“I like the sound of that,” I say, squeezing his hand.

Brewer chuckles. “I’ll remind you of that when you see where I live.”

How could it be worse than my empty shell of an apartment?

“I’ll wrap it up because you have other visitors, but I’ll be back to get you tomorrow.”

Other visitors? Brewer moves his chair back to the corner and my heart drops. I don’t want to see him go. He has to be the only person I can say that about. “Hey, what about work? How much trouble am I in?”

“Your chain of command almost listed you as AWOL when you didn’t report in. It’s been taken care of. They know you’re in the hospital.” I breathe a sigh of relief, and he smiles. “They’re doing everything they can to fast track your retirement.”

“It doesn’t feel like it.”

“Trust me, they want you off their hands before you do something stupid enough to make things uncomfortable for them. Nobody wants to throw a POW in the brig. It doesn’t look good. You’re a national fucking hero.”

Go fucking figure. Me, a national hero.

“Good night, Nash.” His voice is soft, like a caress that soothes my neediness caused by his leaving.

Brewer pushes past my visitors, and they file in one-by-one, their large bodies swallowing up all the space in my tiny room, until it’s bursting with Bitches.

Wardell slaps a plastic zip-locked bag in my lap. “We brought you boiled hotdogs. It’s a gift from McCormick.” All the Bitches laugh, except McCormick.

“I didn’t make those!” His cheeks are almost as red as his hair. “I told you, it’s not as weird as you make it out to be. Lots of people like their hotdogs boiled.”

Stiles claps him on the back. “Settle down, carrot stick. Can’t you take a joke?”

“No, but for real, we got you something you might actually use.” West or Wardell, whatever he goes by, drops a canvas bag in my lap. The logo says Bitches with Stitches: healing hearts one stitch at a time. When I peek inside I find several skeins of yarn, different types of knitting needles, and some handwritten instructions which I’m definitely going to need. I mean, if these guys keep showing up and harassing me, I guess I’m going to have to learn how to knit.

McCormick grabs the hot dogs from my lap. “Shit, if no one else wants them, I’ll eat them. If I don’t have to buy myself dinner, I can afford to go drinking after this. You want to come?” he asks the big bearded bear next to him.

“You know I can’t drink after nine on a work night.”

“Anyway,” Wardell continues, shaking his head. “We heard you were having a bad day, and that’s what Bitches do. We show up for each other on the bad days.”

I can’t explain the heavy weight settling in my chest. I don’t even fucking know these guys, so why do I care? “But I’m not a Bitch. I only came to one meeting. I wasn’t even going to…”

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