His Chubby Obsession

Chapter Twelve: Small Mercies

Charlotte slept through the whole night.

I didn't realize it until I woke at dawn out of habit, my body still braced for the small cries that had punctuated every night for the past six months — the whimpers, the thrashing, the moments I'd learned to catch before they became full-blown screaming. Instead there was just her breathing, slow and even, Mr. Hoppy tucked under one arm, sunlight starting to creep gold across the quilt.

I lay there a long moment, almost afraid to move, the way you're afraid to move when something fragile has finally settled and you don't want to be the reason it startles again.

No nightmares. Not one.

I didn't know yet what that meant, exactly, whether it meant anything at all beyond a single lucky night. But I let myself hold it anyway, careful, like something I'd been handed instead of something I'd earned.

—

I found Enzo on the porch that evening, after Charlotte had gone down easy for the second night in a row, sitting on the top step with a beer he wasn't really drinking, looking out at nothing in particular.

"Room for one more?" I asked.

He shifted over without a word, which from Enzo was its own kind of invitation.

The air had that particular late-summer softness to it, crickets tuning up in the grass, the sky doing something slow and orange behind the tree line. For a few minutes neither of us said anything, and it didn't feel like the awkward kind of silence. It felt like the kind two people can only sit in once they've stopped needing to perform for each other.

"She slept through the night," I finally said.

"Yeah?" Something in his voice eased, genuine. "That's good."

"I don't know if it means anything. If it's just one night, or if — " I stopped myself before the hope could get too loud, too fragile, before I said it out loud and jinxed it the way you jinx anything good by naming it too soon.

"Kids know more than we give them credit for," Enzo said. "She probably feels it. That nobody's yelling in the next room. That the walls aren't waiting to blow up."

"I hope so." I wrapped my arms around my knees, the way I'd started doing on this porch, like it was easier to take up space if I made myself smaller first, an old habit dying slow. "I keep waiting for the part where I have to explain to her why we can't stay. Why this — all of it, the club, the garage, the safety — is temporary."

"Who says it's temporary?"

I looked over at him. He wasn't looking at me, still watching the sky do its slow burn toward dark, but there was something deliberate in the way he'd said it. Not flirtation. Just fact, offered plainly, the way he seemed to offer most things.

"You don't even know me," I said, not unkindly. "Not really. Four days ago I was a stranger you almost ran your bike into."

"I know you flinch less than you did four days ago." He finally glanced my way. "I know your kid slept through the night for the first time since you got here, and you cried a little just telling me about it, even though you're trying not to let me see. I know enough."

I didn't have anything to say to that. My throat had gone tight in a way that had nothing to do with fear.

"Can I ask you something?" I said instead, needing somewhere else to put the feeling. "About your mom. You don't have to answer."

He was quiet a moment, turning the beer bottle slowly in his hands.

"She used to sit on a porch a lot like this one," he finally said. "Different house. Same kind of quiet, though. Like she was always listening for something. Waiting to see if it was safe to relax yet." His jaw tightened, just slightly. "She never got to stop waiting. That's the part that stays with me. Not just that he hurt her. That she spent nineteen years of my life braced for the next time, and never once got a stretch long enough to actually put it down."

"I'm sorry."

"I don't tell people that story much." He looked at me then, really looked, something unguarded in it that I hadn't seen from him before, not even the night he'd told me about his mother in the driveway that first morning. "I don't know why I'm telling you."

"Maybe because I know what it's like to be the one still waiting," I said quietly. "Even when the room's quiet. Even when nobody's yelling. Some part of you keeps bracing anyway, because bracing is the only thing that's ever kept you safe before."

"Yeah." His voice had gone rough. "That."

Without quite deciding to, I reached over and put my hand over his on the step between us. He went very still, the way I imagined a man goes still when he's not sure if something good is actually allowed to be happening to him, and for a moment neither of us moved, my hand resting light over his, the crickets loud in the quiet, the last of the orange light bleeding out of the sky.

He didn't pull away. Neither did I.

"Emma," he started, low, and something in the way he said my name made my whole chest go warm and terrified all at once, the good kind of terrified, the kind I hadn't let myself feel in longer than I could remember —

Headlights swept up the long gravel driveway, cutting hard and sudden across the dark yard, and every soft thing in my body turned instantly, instinctively, to stone.

Enzo was on his feet before I'd even fully processed the light, his hand already moving to something tucked at the small of his back, his whole frame shifting into a stillness that had nothing relaxed left in it.

"Inside," he said, quiet, urgent. "Now."

I didn't argue. I was already moving, my heart slamming against my ribs, every good, warm, terrified feeling from thirty seconds ago collapsing instantly back into the only feeling I actually knew how to trust anymore.

Fear.