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Rebecca went still at the sound of Raymond’s voice.
“What are those from?”
The question was quiet, but there was something firm underneath it, something impossible to slip away from. Raymond wasn’t looking directly at her yet, his attention still half on the paperwork spread across the embalming station, pen moving in slow, methodical strokes across the page, but Rebecca knew exactly what he had seen.
Her sleeves had ridden up.
Just enough.
Rebecca immediately tugged them back down over her wrists, pulse jumping unpleasantly beneath her skin. “Nothing,” she muttered. “Just old stuff.”
The excuse sounded weak the moment it left her mouth.
The fluorescent lights hummed softly overhead, filling the room with that familiar sterile glow that flattened everything into pale shades of gray. Outside, rain tapped quietly against the mortuary windows, muffled beneath the distant drone of refrigeration units. It should have felt comforting. Familiar. Instead, the room suddenly felt far too small.
Raymond finally looked up from his notes.
His expression didn’t change much; it rarely did. That was one of the strange things about him. Other people wore concern openly, loud and obvious, but with Raymond it settled deep into the lines of his face instead, hidden beneath restraint and tired professionalism. Still, Rebecca could see it there immediately.
He knew she was lying.
The scrape of his shoes against the floor sounded unnervingly loud as he moved closer. Rebecca kept her eyes fixed stubbornly on the counter between them, pretending to organize instruments that didn’t need organizing.
“Rebecca.”
God, she hated when he used that tone. So calm. Gentle. Patient enough to wait her out forever.
“It’s nothing,” she repeated more quietly.
Raymond stopped beside her shoulder. Close enough for her to feel the warmth radiating from him despite the chill that always clung to the building after dark. “Those aren’t accidental.”
Rebecca swallowed hard.
Her throat felt tight all at once. She could already feel shame beginning to creep up her spine, cold and familiar. She hated this part most, the being seen. She could handle nightmares, demons, endless nights trapped in this horrible place, but this? Someone looking at the ugliest parts of her and understanding exactly what they meant?
That terrified her.
She laughed once under her breath, humorless. “You don’t have to do the therapist thing.”
“I’m not,” Raymond said softly.
The gentleness in his voice almost made it worse.
Rebecca finally risked looking at him then, and immediately wished she hadn’t. Raymond was watching her with that same awful understanding he always seemed to carry, like he could see every crack in a person no matter how carefully they hid them. There was no judgment in his expression. No disgust. Just quiet concern that settled heavily in her chest.
He reached out slowly, giving her enough time to pull away if she wanted to, before resting a hand lightly against her forearm over the fabric of her sleeve.
“You don’t have to explain it,” he said. “Not tonight.”
Something inside her nearly broke at that.
Rebecca looked away sharply, blinking hard against the sudden sting in her eyes. Crying felt humiliating; she’d spent too many years teaching herself not to. Weakness had consequences. Vulnerability had consequences. But Raymond’s thumb brushed once against her sleeve in a small, absent motion that felt unbearably careful, and suddenly keeping herself together became difficult.
The silence stretched softly between them.
Finally, she whispered, “I’m trying.”
“I know.”
Rebecca pressed her lips together hard enough to hurt. The exhaustion sitting inside her bones suddenly felt impossibly heavy, like she’d been carrying it alone for years and was only now realizing how badly it hurt.
Raymond stepped closer then, slow and deliberate, and drew her gently against him.
For a second she stiffened automatically, old instincts flaring, but his arms only settled around her carefully, securely, never forcing anything more. The steady rhythm of his heartbeat grounded her far more effectively than it should have. Warmth seeped through the cold she'd been carrying all evening.
“You’re not alone in this anymore,” he murmured quietly against her hair.
Rebecca shut her eyes.
Maybe someday she would tell him everything. About the loneliness that hollowed her out from the inside. About the nights where the weight of everything became too much to carry quietly. About how easy it had once felt to hurt herself just to make the noise in her head stop for a little while.
But Raymond wasn’t asking for explanations tonight.
Tonight he simply held her there in the quiet fluorescent haze of the mortuary while rain whispered against the windows, and for the first time in a long while, Rebecca let herself believe that maybe she didn’t have to survive everything alone anymore.