Page 99 of Hold Him Like Gravity

My arms went around him and I pulled him close, held him tight.

“Thank you,” I murmured against his warm skin as the hot water splashed down my back.

“Don’t ever have to thank me for protecting you,” he said, his arms going around me, a thousand pounds of pressure falling from his shoulders as he did.

A deep exhale escaped him as his face pressed against the side of mine.

“Do you want me to heat up dinner?” I asked.

“No, babe,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I just want to go to bed. And sleep in late. So, you’re calling out tomorrow and staying here with me.”

“Sounds good to me,” I said, wanting nothing more.

We stayed there for a long time, just enjoying the closeness. But, soon, we both started to yawn.

Climbing out in silence, we toweled off. When I went over to the sink to brush my teeth, Rico went to the linen closet, grabbing a gallon of bleach, then stopping the tub and starting to fill it with scalding hot water. And the entire gallon.

“Gonna keep this door closed,” he said after brushing his teeth too, turning on the exhaust fan, then following me into the bedroom. “That’s gotta cook for a few hours.”

With that, we both made our way to the bed, tumbling in and curling up.

Maybe we should have lain awake, tossing and turning, fretting over the moral repercussions of the events of the night.

But we both drifted off easily, lulled by one another and all of the possibilities laid out before us.

EPILOGUE

Rico - 1 Day

Kick needed more sleep than I did. All the weeks of stress and fear had clearly done a number on her. And with all of that shit handled for good, she was sleeping like a baby.

I slipped out of bed around ten, draining the tub, then rinsing the clothes. The black hoodie and pants were now a light gray with splashes of white from where the bleach made direct contact before it got diluted. Everything reeked. But it was all going to go through a wash cycle at the laundromat before I handed off the tee and the hoodie to an unhoused guy I passed. The pants could go in a dumpster somewhere.

The disposal of it all was the main reason I never had and likely never would have an expensive wardrobe. The number of clothes I’d needed to get rid of over the years was ridiculous. But, hey, some needy people were better clothed for it.

Bass was the one to take the clothes away that morning, though, needing to get rid of his own.

While I’d been the one showing Kyle and his near-rapist buddy the error of their ways, Bastian had been in the room with us. And, yeah, the blood got everywhere before I finally had enough and put an end to their miserable asses.

Coal had been the one to take out the other two. Renzo felt it was time for him to officially make his bones.

So, in the next few months, I figured I could expect to call Coal an equal, a capo instead of a soldier.

“Hey, why didn’t you wake me?” Kick asked, coming out from the hallway wearing barely-there shorts and a thin tee, her hair all bed-messy, her eyes still heavy-lidded from sleep.

“Because you needed your sleep,” I said, reaching into the cabinet to pull down a mug for her.

“It’s eleven-thirty,” she said.

“Which means we can order lunch which is, arguably, a better meal than breakfast.”

“Oh, come on. A nice stack of French toast with powdered sugar? Nosandwichcan beat that,” she said.

“You’ve clearly never had an Italian Ice Cream Cone,” I told her.

“What is an Italian Ice Cream Cone?” she asked as she sipped her coffee.

“A hollowed out piece of Italian bread stuffed with meatballs, cheese, and sauce,” I told her, watching her lips part.

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