Celeste
I had never seen Axel with his head in his hands.
I'd seen him laugh until he cried. I'd seen him furious, and smug, and so tender that it undid me. I had never once seen him fold, and watching it happen, a big man in a muddy jacket hunched in a closet in front of a flickering monitor, was like watching a load-bearing wall give way.
I knelt beside him. My knees found the cold floor, and my hand found the back of his neck, and under my palm I felt the tremor that ran through him, fine and constant, like a wire in the wind.
"Look at me," I said.
He did. His eyes were red-rimmed and wild, gold bleeding through the brown, and I understood in one awful flash what the last six hours must have been for him. Calling down a thread that didn't answer. Walking home slowly because someone
