Chapter Seven
He had been ignoring her.
Well, that wasn't the complete truth, she told herself as she stepped out of her truck and walked through the guest parking lot. He looked at her every now and then, and when he wasn't trying, she caught a glimpse of the pain that he had been feeling as of late. It had been three weeks since she had been to his place, three weeks since their last dinner together. Three weeks since he had last called her by name. She saw the pain, and the unguarded fear, and worst of all, she saw the dark circles under his eyes. He wasn't sleeping.
She knew about his nightmares, he had told her during a weekend dinner, when they had both thrown caution to the wind and decided to include alcoholic beverages to their usual dinner. A few glasses of wine and they were speaking more freely than normal. That was when he had mentioned the nightmares, how he could never get back to sleep after he had one, how he relived the same day over and over again. Post-traumatic stress symdrome. After he had brought them up, and then dropped the topic just as easily, he had looked better. No more bags under his eyes, no more dark circles. It was as if talking about it had made him feel better about them. And now they were back.
There was no reason that she could think of. The only time they had let him near a case that dealt with a shooting was when they asked him to run a few tests on a substance that Eric Delko had found on a bullet. There hadn't been anything to do with a jewelery store, an officer involved shooting, anything like that. But he wasn't sleeping again. He was more irritable than normal, more short with his words. Calleigh was worried. She couldn't help but be worried.
She stopped when she got to his door, and hesitated for a moment before gathering her nerve and knocking. She had to know what was going on. After spending so much time with him, after getting to know him, she had to know. He didn't answer her knock, but she wasn't about to give up. She knew that he was home. She had driven past his parking space, and had seen the bright yellow motorcycle parked there. She reached for the knob and turned it, hoping to hell that his security alarm wasn't going to go off.
The door gave away easily, and swung open to reveal a dark condo, the only light on was the one in the hood above his stove. The door that led from the kitchen to the small porch was open, however, and her heels clicked across the tiles as she made her way out there, holding onto the door frame as she looked at his back. He was facing away from her, a glass of red wine at his elbow, shoulders tightening slightly. "I know you're there," he said quietly. His voice was rough from lack of sleep.
She heard the music, then, the small disc player sitting on the table, music drifting softly into the still air. She remained there, listening to it, wondering if it had some meaning to him, or if it was just a song that he liked.
Tell me one more time again I guess I didn't hear you
And I don't know all the secrets that you keep inside
I tried the same thing too
But they all come pouring out of me when I'm talking to you
Calleigh sighed and walked out there, standing behind him. "What's going on with you, Tim?' she asked in a voice that was just as quiet as his had been. "You're not talking to me anymore, you barely look at me, and when you do...there's something in your eyes that I just don't like," she finished. When he didn't respond, she moved and walked in front of him, crouching down so that she was on eye level with him. "How much wine have you had?"
"It's Friday. We don't have to work tomorrow. I can get drunk if I want."
"How much?"
"Not enough," he answered frankly. "What does it matter?"
She blinked at his rebuke. "Because it matters to me. I'm sorry if that bothers you, but it does. You've got me worried. You're acting like you did when you first got out of the hospital. I know it can't be something that happened at work, because-"
"How do you know that?" he asked, words raw. He finally swung his eyes to meet hers, and held the gaze for as long as he could before looking away. There was something about her that made him want to look away when they kept eye contact for too long. "I told you that I read the file. I know what was supposed to happen."
She nodded slowly. "I was supposed to be there instead of you, but AFIS started to kick out possible matches for me, and I had to look through them, do an eyeball comparison of the prints. Horatio said that he was going to ask you to come along instead, and asked me to keep him updated. Twenty minutes later, maybe thirty, a page went out to all available officers. You know the drill. Officer-involved shooting, everyone needs to know."
Speedle took a deep breath and reached blindly for his glass of wine. She covered her hand with his and then removed the glass, putting it further away from him. "You do realize, that because of AFIS-"
"You can't know what might have happened."
Again, he looked at her, and the hurt look was gone from his eyes, but something had replaced, something akin to anger, but not quite. "Then you tell me why every time I close my eyes at night, I see-" He stopped and looked down, looking at where her hands were resting on his knees, so that she could keep her balance while crouched down like that. "Tell me why I see it."
"I know that you've been having the nightmares again."
"Not the usual ones. New ones, but similar." When Speedle stared at her, it was very pointed. And she knew what he was trying to say, even if he couldn't find the words. It felt almost like he had dropped an ice cube down the back of her shirt, and it was slipping down, very slowly, taking care to touch each part of her spine as it traveled. "I'm sorry, you didn't need to hear that."
"No, but I think that you needed to say that." She blinked once, twice, letting his words sink into her. "God, Tim, how do you deal with that?" He nodded at the glass of wine and the bottle that she hadn't seen before. Half of the bottle was empty, but he didn't seem drunk. Far from it, he seemed frighteningly stone cold sober. "That's not the way to deal with something like this."
"Then you have the damned nightmares," he shot back without thinking, wincing when he saw the look on her face. They both looked at the disc player when the song ended, and then started up again. "I like it," he said simply. "It fits."
She sighed, shifting her hands against the material of his slacks, her hands creeping higher by an inch. He felt the heat from her hands. He smelled her perfume. "It should. When are you going to learn? What happened, happened, Tim. You can't stop it, you can't...I'm not even sure what to say to you anymore. I thought that I knew you, finally knew what was going on in that cluttered mind of yours, but I guess I don't." Calleigh stood up, using his legs as her crutch, before turning away and walking to the door. "You know that you can call me whenever you want. I'll listen, even if you want to stay silent."
The words caught in his throat, but he managed to fight back against the tighteness. "I almost did," he confessed. "Every night since. To make sure that you were still there. That you were okay. Just wanted to hear your voice. But I couldn't. I don't know why, I just couldn't bring myself to call."
"I told you, you don't have to say anything. Just call. I'll be here quicker than you can play this song through."
He heard the smile, but couldn't see it. She had turned her back to him, when he had turned to look at her. Ironic, he thought. They both looked away, when the other wanted to look at them. There was some sort of poetic justice in that. "I just need time."
That phrase called her to whirl around and come stomping back to him. She sunk back into her old place, but instead of touching him, her hands shot forward and started to unbutton the dress shirt he was wearing. He watched her with dull eyes as she undid each of the buttons, exposing his chest to the still air. Her lips pursed as she moved the shirt off of his left shoulder, looking at the small scar. For such a little thing, she thought to herself, it did a hell of a lot of damage. Her fingers reached up, and ran over the scar with a feather touch, looking into his face as if it could cause him pain, as if it were still an open wound, and in one way, she supposed, it was. He simply looked back down at her, blinking calmly, trying to fight the goosebumps that were erupting all over him.
"You almost didn't have that time, Tim. Quarter of an inch more, and you wouldn't have left in an ambulance with the lights and sirens going. Your first stop wouldn't have been the hospital." He saw the sparkle in her eyes, knew it was tears, but unable to do anything. She kept feeling that area, the softness of the newly formed skin. "Damn it, do you know how scared I was when I saw it was you? When I saw Horatio standing there, covered in your blood? I stayed by your side in the hospital, every night. I slept there rather than in my own house," she hissed at him, nothing like the lilting, charming voice he had come to like. "I couldn't cry for you, because I didn't know you. But I know you now, and I can cry now."
"You are," he told her, as a single tear coursed its way down her cheek, stopping to rest just above her jaw. So easy to reach forward and brush it away, to kiss it away, to tell her that there would be no more tears. But that wasn't his style, that wasn't Tim Speedle. And he couldn't. She wouldn't stop touching him, damn it. Just wouldn't stop. He wanted to move away, but he wasn't sure if he wanted her to stop.
"The problem is that I care too much. I care too much about you, and I can't stop that from happening. When you do this to me, when you act like this..." She trailed off and finally removed her hand from his shoulder. She broke the contact, but only for a moment. She raised his hand next, and folded back all his fingers but the first two, swallowing thickly as she brought his fingers to rest against the side of her neck, seeking out the pound of her pulse. "I'm still here," she whispered. "I have been all along. Nothing happened to me. Tell yourself that when you go to sleep. I'm fine. I was never shot."
He closed his eyes, unsure of how to answer, or even if he was supposed to. "I get scared, every night." His whisper was so damned raw, so full of emotion, so unlike himself.
She moved his hand away and rested it on his thigh, before standing again. Her hand trailed along his once injured shoulder as she walked past him, determined to leave this time. "I'm not bulletproof, either," she told him, before disappearing.
She left him alone, with his wine, his darkness, and his music.
The song lyrics are also from the Blue Rodeo song, "'Bulletproof".
Chapter Eight
