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Boris reacts before he does, with a noise that sounds more like a ‘boof’ than a proper, threatening bark. Tommy frowns at the door as the knocking continues – only three people know where he lives, one being his boss, another a serial killer, and the last one has been MIA for three months now. Plus it’s too late for delivery. Not that he ordered anything anyway.
So, eyes not leaving the door, he reaches for the gun he keeps in one of the kitchen drawers, just in case. He pushes Boris out of the way as he walks to the door – the dog is hopeless, already wagging his tail happily, big dangerous thing that he is – and grabs the handle with a glance to the gun in his hand.
He opens the door.
He doesn’t know what he expected but –
It wasn’t this.
It wasn’t Lindy standing in front of him, an arm around another, younger girl who is passed out on her shoulder, her top covered in blood – hers on someone else’s, Tommy isn’t sure. He didn’t expect her, didn’t expect to see her again, to see her at his place, to see her like this.
So he can only gape, for a second or two, before Boris gives another half-bark and effectively startles him out of his thoughts. Without a second of hesitation, without a word really, he grabs the girl and holds her up, one arm around her shoulders and the other beneath her knees. She doesn’t look hurt, simply asleep – the purple bags around her eyes and pallor of her skin speaking of one too many sleepless night, of at least a dozen missed lunches.
So Tommy carries her to his bedroom, no question asked, and watches as Lindy tucks her in with fumbling hands and jerky movements. The sister – her sister, it sudden dawns on him, and with that conclusion come so many questions the cop in him wants, needs to ask, so many answers he needs to hear.
But Lindy is still covered in blood and, when he is certain she is done with taking care of her sister, he grabs her wrist and pulls her to the bathroom. The door to the bedroom closes on Boris snuggling against Sara on the bed. (He usually isn’t allowed, but oh well. Priorities.)
He forces Lindy to sit on the bathtub ledge before he grabs a towel and puts some cold water on it with a large intake of breath. It is all so methodical, standing between her open legs as he cleans the blood off her face, yet his heart hammers in the most painful way against his chest to the sound of her name.
Lin-dy. Lin-dy. Lin-dy.
It seems like forever and yesterday since their last moment at the airport, since the fleeting conversation online. His mind buzzes with the thought, with the sight of her, the way her chest heaves with each breath she takes, the way she looks at him beneath her lashes.
She looks exhausted, and maybe a little wary, but she is here, she is with him, and it is all that matter right now. Just the softness of her skin against his fingertips, her perfume to his nose and that sad, tired half-smile that warms him from inside.
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks as he wipes away a particularly gruesome stain. This one is coming from her, not deep enough that it requires stitches, so he turns around to open a cupboard and grabs the first-aid kit.
(He wonders if she killed someone. If he really wants to know the answer.)
“Not now,” she replies, her voice weak and quiet, so not-Lindy that it throws him off for a second there. When he turns around again, she meets his eyes and adds, “Not yet.”
He nods and dabs a compress to her wound, offers her a sympathetic smile at her wince of pain. The same smile that stays on his lips as he careful applies the band-aid to her temple, smoothing it out with his thumb.
It is quiet, too quiet between them – the air charged with words left unsaid, with heartbreak and remorse and resentment. But he can’t be upset, not really, when she’s back at last – back to New York, back to him. Back and successful, too.
“I’ll fetch you something to wear. Are you hungry?”
She nods her yes and, as if on cue, her stomach starts grumbling.
He nods back.
And that’s basically how he finds himself staring as she raids his cupboards, a slice of bread in her mouth and his tee-shirt engulfing her small frame. It is ridiculous, he knows, but he can’t help the way his heart beats faster as such a lovely sight, the way his mind goes overdrive coming up with all the other, more pleasant, scenarios that could end in Lindy in his clothes stealing his food.
He’s such a goner, not that it comes as a surprise.
“How’s Sophia?” she asks as she fights with a jar of peanut butter.
He snatches it from her grip, opens it for her. “Fine. Better.”
Neither of them comments on the fact that he checked on her friends while she was gone.
“Good. That’s good.”
He doesn’t ask why she came to him and not her best friend, doesn’t ask why or how her missing sister is now sleeping in his bed, doesn’t ask why she was covered in blood, what happened, what happened, what happened.
Instead, he watches Lindy eating peanut butter straight from the jar, watches Lindy settling on his couch, falling asleep with her legs tucked under her and her head on his shoulder.
Questions will come later.
For now, he appreciates that.