The Chemist

It felt normal in an abnormal way to have Daniel lie down beside her, instinctive and comfortable for him to wrap one arm around her waist and bury his face in the hollow of her neck. The scratch of his short beard tickled her skin, but she didn’t mind.

She was starting to drift off when she became conscious of his movement beside her. At first she thought he was beginning to snore, but the shuddering didn’t pause. She grabbed his fingers at her waist, and found them trembling. She jerked up and twisted to face him. His eyes flew wide when she moved so suddenly, and he started to sit up. She pushed him down with one hand on his chest.

“What’s wrong?” he whispered.

She looked at his face. It was hard to tell in the shade, but he looked paler than before. She should have been watching for this. Now that they had the chance to figuratively lay their weapons down for a moment, of course the severe strain of the night before would catch up to them. Probably not authentic shock; more likely just a traditional panic attack.

“Nothing. Except maybe with you.” She touched his forehead; it felt clammy. “Do you feel sick?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“You were shaking.”

He shook his head and took a deep breath. “Sorry, I was just thinking about… how close it was.”

“Don’t. It’s over. You’re safe.”

“I know, I know.”

“I won’t let anything happen to you.”

He laughed once, and she could hear the same sound of hysteria that had been in her own laugh last night. “I know,” he repeated. “I’ll be fine. But what about you? Are you safe?” He pulled her down onto his chest, cradling the damaged side of her face carefully in his long fingers, and whispered into her hair, “I could have lost you, just like that. Everything that means anything to me is gone – I’ve lost my home, my job, my life… I’ve lost myself. I’m hanging on by my fingernails, Alex, and it’s you I’m hanging on to. If something happens to you… I don’t know what that means for me. I don’t know how I keep going. I’m dealing with the rest, Alex, but I can’t lose you, too, I can’t.”

Another shudder ran through his body.

“It’s okay,” she murmured uncertainly, reaching up to rest her fingers against his lips. “I’m here.”

Was that the right thing to say? She didn’t have any experience comforting someone. Even when her mother had been in the last stages of the illness that had killed her, Judy didn’t want sympathy and she didn’t want lies. If Juliana were to say something like You look great today, Mom, Judy’s response was always along the lines of Don’t bother with that nonsense, I have a mirror. It never seemed to occur to Judy that Juliana might need comfort; after all, Juliana wasn’t the one who was dying.

She’d learned early not to seek sympathy for herself; she’d never really known how to show it to someone else. She would be more comfortable with the clinical, explaining that what he was feeling now was just a natural response to the specter of a violent death, but she’d said things like that to him before and she knew they didn’t help. So she found herself mimicking things she’d seen on television, speaking softly, stroking the side of his face.

“We’re okay… it’s over.”

She wondered if she should put the sleeping bag over him, just in case, though it was already sweltering and he didn’t feel cold. Still, she’d already come to the conclusion that he ran at a warmer temperature than she did. Both physically and metaphorically.

His breathing still sounded rough. She pulled her head free and then propped herself up so she could examine his face.

He was no longer just pale. His soft eyes were haunted, tormented, his jaw tight against the panic he was trying to control. A raised line pulsed in his forehead. He stared at her like he was pleading for a release from pain.

His expression ignited a nightmare of a memory, the memory of his interrogation, and she impulsively threw her arms around his neck, pulling his head up off the floor of the Humvee and hugging it tight to her chest to hide that face. She felt her own convulsive shiver, and the clinical side of her brain let her know that she was every bit as traumatized as he was. Her nonclinical side didn’t care what the reason was. A wave of panic was washing through her and she felt as if she couldn’t hold him close enough to reassure herself that he was actually alive and safe and here. As if she might suddenly blink and be back inside her black tent with Daniel screaming in agony. Or, worse, she would open her eyes to the dark upstairs hallway only to find Daniel’s bleeding body at her feet instead of the hit man’s. Her pulse spiked and she couldn’t breathe.

Daniel rolled their bodies so he was at her side, and his hands peeled hers free from his head. For a second she thought he was about to take the comforter’s role at which she had failed so spectacularly, but then their eyes met and she was looking into a mirror of all the turmoil and fear in her own head. Fear of loss, fear of having because that made the loss possible. Rather than comfort, the depth of his fear multiplied hers. She could lose him, and she didn’t know how to live with that.

CHAPTER 21

T

heir lips crushed together so suddenly she wasn’t sure who had moved first.

And then their bodies were tangling together with a kind of desperate fury, lips and fingers, tongues and teeth. Breathing was secondary and she managed it only in broken pants that left her still dizzy. She wanted nothing but to be closer, and then closer, to be inside his skin somehow so that he could never be ripped away from her. She felt the scald as the wound along her jaw reopened, and all the bruises, old and new, flared to life, but the pain did nothing to distract from that acute need. They grappled almost like adversaries, turning and twisting together in the limits of the small space, slamming against the duffel bags and then back to the floor. She was amazed at how electrifying his brute strength was – strength in a man had always been something to fear, but now she thrilled to it. Fabric tore, and she couldn’t guess who it belonged to. She remembered the texture of his skin, the shape of his muscles under her hands, but she had not imagined they could feel like this against her own.