Home Is Your Heartbeat ('Home Is' Book Two - Daryl Dixon)

Chapter 37 - Take Me To The River (Talking Heads)

NATE

Haven't got a clue which one it is that wakes me up.

The ache I'm feeling throughout every muscle and bone in my body?

Or the image of Deanna in my head. Holding Reg tight in her arms as he bled out in front of her.

I lay still, trying to calm my laboured breathing. Before the sound of it rouses Daryl.

He's finally shed his  shame. His perceived guilt over what his Father had done to him for so long. Eventually coming to accept and fully own the truth. That it wasn't his fault and never had been.

His Father....his Father's actions....and no one else's. Never Daryl's.

I think (know, rather)  that it'll probably be a long time before I can come to the same acceptance. Of the role I played in last night's horror.

Maybe I shouldn't try to accept it? Just use my shame as a lesson instead. So that I never repeat it.

But if you do that, you stupid bitch? Then you'll be lying to Daryl again!

You promised him....that this shit would stop! Yet here you are wallowing in it. As if it's your very own, custom-made hair shirt.

I slide out of bed and shuffle upstairs to the bathroom. Groaning once I glimpse the pile of filthy, sodden clothes on the floor of the shower.

Filling the bathtub, I chuck them in along with a bar of soap. Leaving them to soak while I sit on the toilet seat.

"Jehovah!"  I say the name out loud.

Mostly in the hope, that a large group of women dressed as ancient Judean men? Will suddenly surround the dunny and start stoning me to death. Just like the scene in 'Monty Python's Life of Brian'.

I must be going cray-cray again? Because I swear I can hear the faint echo of Hershel's guffaws and the slap of his hand on a thigh.

Shaking my head and pinching my face, I rise. Reluctantly shuffle my butt back to the bathtub.

*

Twenty minutes later I'd scrubbed, rinsed and wrung out our clothes. Begin hanging them on the many rails adorning the walls.

I was holding Daryl's boxers in my hands when both of his snuck around my rib cage. Cupping my breasts tenderly.

"We gotta washin machine yer know."

Seeing his underwear? He took my nipples hostage between his fingers....while growling the threat in my ear.

"Yer even think about it, woman? Our kids will need to be bottle-fed! So yer better be my good girl and hang them up to dry....right now! "

My lord and master's grip relaxed only slightly  as I followed his orders without a word.

"How long have we got left....until that implant of yers runs out?"  He whispered.

One hand commenced its journey southwards over my tummy and his lips nuzzled my earlobe.

"About two months by my reckoning. Maybe a few more after that for my body to get back into a regular fertile cycle?"

I squeaked when his hands suddenly changed direction, lifted me up and spun me around. My man carried me in a fireman's lift down the stairs....whistling merrily like he was one of the Seven Dwarfs.

And tapping an accompanying beat on my butt with his palms.

Muttley squinted sleepily out of the laundry to see what all the fuss was about.