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“Nick,” I whispered, but he was as distant to me as I had been to him a few minutes ago, lost in some version of the past where he saw himself as the enemy.
“His dad didn’t realize, but his enemies took advantage of the situation. They waited until the younger brother came home, then stole both him and the young boy away, and God alone knows why, but they took the bear for good measure. It was defenceless. Like the boy." He drove an invisible, hard line across the back of my hand.
"What happened?" I clung to him just as tightly, trying to be the sturdy rock he always was for me.
"The older brother was the only one left. The little boy was just too little, and the big brother managed to stay standing when they asked one of them to fight the bear for the kid’s life.”
Tears welled in my eyes, remembering the claw marks that rent his stomach with scar tissue. Nick met my gaze, his rich with empathy as it hit me.
"You’re the big brother."
He nodded. “I had a small knife and a whole lot of determination against a bear already wounded, both their blood flowing into the drains in the fighting pits.” Nick extracted a slim knife from his pocket, a small scene of a man fighting a bear carved into its pale handle.
“It’s beautiful,” I murmured, running a hesitant finger across the markings when he held it out.
“The big brother got to keep the bear’s skin, and one of its claws.” He swallowed hard.
"That's not shell, is it?"
Running his thumb across the engraved handle of the blade, his other hand wrapped so tight around mine that my bones cracked, Nick said nothing. Everything ached in me as the numbness fell away, but I didn't care. I wanted to both never hear the end of this story and to hang onto every breath all at once.
"It's funny what you can do in times of need,” he mused softly. “They let me keep a talisman as a reminder.”
Something in his tone altered and I knew this was at the end.
"D-did you get your baby brother back?"
"Yes." Nick raised his head, fury pouring from him. "In a fucking bodybag. They shot him, and then my father drove me and my brother home. A message to my father not to cross into others’ territory. He’s barely spoken to me since."
"I'm sorry,” I whispered, squeezing his hand back.
"Don't you dare fucking apologise for that,” he snapped, glaring into my eyes.
I should have been terrified, knowing what he was capable of, what made him who he was.
"I'm grateful you told me." I tangled our fingers together. "Have you ever spoken about that before?"
He laughed, a ruined, broken sound. "Are you fucking kidding? It's like a reverse Goldilocks story, without any sort of happy ending." Breathing out hard, he raised one hand to trace my cheeks, running his fingers along my jawline. "Maybe you could be my Goldilocks, and make and make everything alright."
“That was a terrible line,” I said with a small smile.
A slow smile spread across his face, chasing the darkness away. “Yes. It was.”
He pocketed the knife, then folded his arms around me tightly. For the first time it wasn’t my tears that flowed, but his. Nick’s body wracked with the sobs that rent from him and with every one that fell, an inch of my numbness dissipated, until my entire heart hurt for the man who held me.
I sank into his chest, resting my head in its familiar place against the steady thump of his heart. My fingers slipped through the gaps in his shirt, pushing the material open between his buttons to graze the ridges of skin there. A million things ran through my head to say.
Do you still visit your father? Where is your brother buried? Did you hurt the men who hurt you? You’re so brave.
Not one of those things made it out of my mouth. What actually fell out was, “I love you.”
Nick stilled for a long moment. “Yeah?”
I shrugged, deciding this was the new me and I’d own it. “Yeah.”
Nick hugged me tighter. “Me too.”
I tipped my head back, my lips parted. “Why did you come out to find me?”
