There were no candles lit, and the fire in the hearth had all but burned down to embers. But it wasn’t so dark that I was stumbling around. I spotted Rivven in his place behind the bar almost immediately, and I wasn’t in any danger of waking him up by accidentally stepping on his tail or ankle or abdomen. Like the bedroom upstairs, the dining room was flooded with that same stark winter brightness. It turned the warm shades of wood in here to hushed lines of black. And turned Rivven from pale blue to stunning silver.
But a burnished silver, I thought, my eyes tracing the grooves of his muscles – relaxed in sleep – and noting the almost crushed velvet sheen his skin took on in this light. Suddenly, I was dying to paint it. To painthim. Exactly as he was now. On his back, with his left hand behind his head and his right wrist resting on his belly, a broad-brimmed hat covering most of his face. His boots and pants were on, though his belt had been removed and placed at his side. I remembered the hook I’d seen at the back of it, and knew that it wouldn’t have been comfortable to keep on while sleeping. I’d paint that detail, too. The belt on the floor behind the bar.
The title came to me without me even having to think about it.Portrait of a good man at rest.
I thought about waking him up. Directing his groggy body back to his own bed. But I already knew he wouldn’t go. It wouldn’t be worth waking him up just for him to tell me to go lie down in the bed instead.
But for some reason, I wasn’t ready to return to that room at the top of the stairs. Instead, I stepped carefully behind the bar and sat down beside him. I worried I’d woken him when he tensed at once, but he only rolled over, his hat flopping off to one side. Now, his right arm was bent beneath his head as he lay on his side. His left hand landed on my knee. And stayed there.
“Well, I can’t move now, can I?” I whispered. “I’m trapped.”
I wasn’t trapped at all, obviously. I could easily move my leg out from beneath his hand, maybe even without waking him.
But his hand was so fucking warm on me. Solid, heavy, but gentle. Not grabbing or squeezing. Just…
Holding me, I guessed.
I could stay there and be held by him. Just for a moment or two.
I didn’t have anywhere else to be right now. My head wasn’t pounding, begging me to crawl into the bed. I didn’t have to wake up early in the morning and drag my tired body out into the cold to get to work. There was no twelve-hour shift to clock in for.
Holy…
The reality of that was so wondrous it was nearly alarming. I’d been too out of it with my migraine to truly understand my new situation. It hadn’t felt real in the way it did now.
I was actually here. I’d made it out of New Toronto. I didn’t have many credits to my name, but that didn’t really seem to matter anymore. I didn’t have to endlessly scrounge for more ofthem. Didn’t have to grind myself down to the studs of my being just to live a half-decent sort of life.
Had it even been half-decent?
I wanted to cry. For the life I had left and for the realization that things were finally different. The realization that I could just sit here if I wanted to. Sit here, with this big, kind, near-stranger’s hand on my leg, and that I didn’t have to do a thing about it besides enjoying the mundane, unexpected pleasure of the weight and heat of him. I could just bestill.Feel the floor beneath me. Watch the silver-bright luminescence of this world’s winter move through the room. Listen to the wind outside.
Listen to Rivven’s breathing within.
There was nowhere I had to go and nothing I needed to do. No bills, no deadlines, no alarms.
So I stayed sitting there, long past the point of my ass going totally numb.
And when I finally couldn’t sit anymore, I laid my head down beside him.
11
RIVVEN
Iwoke up, but not really. I was still dreaming as I came into consciousness. Because there was a warm, soft body in my arms, and I knew without even opening my eyes that it was Shiloh’s.
There were voices, too. Tasha’s and the warden’s. I tried to ignore them, so that I could remain asleep and stay in my dream, keeping Shiloh against my body.
But the voices did not go away.
Neither, strangely, did the dream.
“When the blazes did she get here?” hissed Warden Tenn.
“I don’t know!” Tasha replied. “You’re the one with the big ears that hear everything! You didn’t hear her come in here last night?”
“No. I was asleep.”
“Well, so was I!” Tasha said. “But she must have come down here at some point...Maybe she sleepwalks.”
