Chapter 19: The Roof

The roof of Cormac's building was flat tar and gravel, with a water tank and a rusted lawn chair.

Maura sat on the parapet with her knees pulled up and the city lights in front of her.

She had been up there since dusk.

Vincent came through the stairwell door at midnight with a first-aid kit in his scarred hand.

"Cormac said you weren't eating," he said. "So I brought you the second best thing."

"What's the second best thing?"

"Something to do."

She almost laughed.

He sat next to her on the parapet and opened the kit.

"Give me your hands."

"I'm not the one who's hurt."

"Your knuckles. You hit the glass."

She looked down.

The skin across her right hand had split and bruised purple, and she hadn't felt it.

She held it out.

He cleaned it with a gauze pad, awkward with his new skin, his thumb wincing every time he bent it.

"Let me," she said.

"I've got it."

"Vincent. You can't close your fingers."

He let her take the gauze.

She did it for him instead, with the salve.

She worked it into the shining pink of his palms.

He watched her hands.

"I was thinking about the night we met," he said.

"Don't."

"You were twenty-two. I was bleeding on your floor, and you told me you'd leave when I stopped."

"I remember."

"I've thought about that every morning for ten years."

Her hands stilled on his.

"Every morning, Maura. I'd wake up and look at the other side of the bed, and I'd count."

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Sacrificed Our Son, But Won't Let Me Go from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.