I opened my mouth to speak.
“She died this mornin’,” Tate announced.
I closed my eyes and mouth then opened my eyes and started to him.
“Don’t,” he gritted and I jerked to a halt. “Don’t come near me, babe.”
“Captain –”
He cut me off. “Called me my name yesterday, Ace.”
I swallowed then mumbled, “Um… Tate –”
“Talked to Betty and Ned,” he interrupted again. “They’re movin’ you to a room closer to their place. Don’t want you on the end. Too far away.”
“Okay,” I agreed.
“You walk to work today?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
“I’ll be here at seven, take you home,” he told me.
“I’ll ask Jim-Billy –”
“I’ll be here, Lauren.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
He stopped speaking and we stared at each other.
Finally, I got brave enough to say, “You aren’t responsible, Tate.”
He didn’t answer.
I took a step toward him and stopped when his hard face got harder.
“You aren’t,” I whispered.
“Why do you swim at night?” he asked and my head tilted to the side at his change in topic.
“Why do I swim at night?”
“Yeah.”
“I have insomnia,” I answered. “Always have, even when I was a kid.”
“You can’t sleep?”
I shook my head. “Sometimes I can’t drop off. Sometimes I wake up, two, three times a night. Sometimes when I wake up, I can’t get back to sleep.”
“So you swim,” he stated.
“Well, not normally, though at home I had a pool, I just never used it for some reason. But here…” I didn’t finish because I didn’t know why I rarely ever used Brad and my pool or why I so often used Ned and Betty’s.
“Your man, he didn’t help you sleep?” Tate asked and I drew in breath.
This wasn’t any of his business, none at all.
Still, I answered, “I’m not sure he could do much about it. It kind of…” I paused then finished, “annoyed him so in the end if I knew I was going to have a rough night, I’d move to the guest bedroom.”
“He let you do that?”
“Let?” I was confused. “He asked me to.”
“He asked you to leave the bed he shared with you,” Tate stated like Brad asking me to move to another bed so he could get a good night’s sleep was like asking me to give up our life, pack a few belongings in a big bandana, tie it to a stick and become hobos.
“Why are we talking about this?” I asked quietly.
“You sleep after you swam?” Tate asked back, not quietly, still shooting questions at me like this was an interrogation.
“Sorry?”
“Those nights you swam, when you got in, did you nod off?”
“Yes.”
“Did you wake up again?”
“No.”
“Exhausted yourself,” he surmised.
“Maybe, listen –”
“So, maybe, if he exhausted you, you wouldn’t have had trouble sleeping.”
“Exhausted me?”
“Yeah, Ace, f**ked you so hard you couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but sleep. Exhausted you.”
I couldn’t move at that moment, couldn’t do anything but stare.
“You were in my bed, couldn’t sleep, that’s what I’d do,” he told me.
“Tate,” I breathed.
“Wanna come to me now?” he asked like it was a dare.
“I…” I swallowed, “I don’t think so.”
“That’s probably a good call.”
“You’re angry,” I said softly, deciding that was it. That was why he was acting in this alarming way, saying these insane things. He told me he said a lot of stuff he didn’t mean when he was angry, that had to be it.
“Yeah, babe, I’m angry. I was angry when I fired her ass and said shit I shouldn’t say. She left, got nabbed by a goddamned psycho who tied her up and cut her up, inside and out. She was alive while he was doin’ it, all the time he was doin’ it. He cut all her hair off at the scalp, he even cut into her scalp and it didn’t bleed all that much because she didn’t have all that much blood left to give. Then he left her, naked, exposed to the elements and covered in blood, to be found by an old lady walkin’ her f**kin’ dog. So now I’m angry about that.”
I hated what he just told me, hated knowing it, hated the images it invoked, hated that it happened to Tonia and her beautiful body and her gorgeous hair. I hated everything about it.
But I knew he had to let it go. I didn’t know why he trusted me to let it go with but he did so I also knew I had to take it.
“You aren’t responsible,” I repeated.
“I kicked her ass out and she was as good as dead not an hour later.”
“Tate, you aren’t responsible. It wasn’t Tonia, it would be someone else.”
“But it was Tonia.”
We stared at each other awhile longer.
Then I whispered, “Can I come to you now?”
“You ready for that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You gotta cross the room, Ace, I ain’t movin’.”
I didn’t think. I just crossed the room.
When I made it to him, I fitted myself to his long body, wrapping my arms around his waist and pressing my cheek against his chest. When I was done, his arms came around me so tight, he squeezed the breath out of me.
I felt him rest his cheek against the top of my head.
“Now, how’d I know you’d do that?” he asked a question he didn’t expect an answer to which was good because he might have known but, until I did it, I didn’t know.
“You aren’t responsible, honey,” I whispered to his chest.
“Keep sayin’ it, baby, maybe it’ll sink in.”
“You aren’t responsible.”
He gave me a squeeze.
“Betty told me what you do,” I said quietly.
Tate didn’t reply.
“Are you gonna find him?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m gonna find him, though they think they want me to but they sure as f**k don’t.”
I tipped my head back to look at him and his head went up when I did.
“Why not?”
“I find him, Ace, I’m gonna rip his dick off and shove it down his throat.”