29. Maya
Maya
The bathroom at Elm House has hot water for forty minutes. I know this because I've timed it since I moved in. Three showers, two baths, one night where I sat on the tile floor and let the water run over my head until it turned cold and counted the seconds until my body calmed with it.
Sunday night. I run the bath.
The faucet is loud in the small bathroom. Steam rises from the surface and fogs the mirror above the sink. Just heat and steam. The water climbing the porcelain inch by inch.
The house is quiet. Cole is in the kitchen. I can hear him through the wall, cabinet opening, the clink of a glass, the tap running. He's doing the thing he does with his hands when the doing needs a container. He's cleaning.
Dante went for a walk after dinner. He came back twenty minutes ago, boots off at the door, the pause in the hallway before he sat down on the couch.
He hasn't spoken since. The silence from the living room is dense.
Palms on his knees, probably. Feet flat on the floor.
Wednesday is close enough to feel. The hearing.
The evidence packet Richard built with data that shouldn't exist, obtained through methods I didn't approve, aimed at a man who sits on a bench every afternoon watching me leave work.
Three days until a courtroom decides whether paper can stop him.
The water reaches the halfway mark. I turn off the faucet.
My shirt comes off over my head. Jeans next. Underwear. The pile on the floor. The mirror is fogged and my reflection is a blur and that's fine. I'm tired of looking at my own face and trying to read what's behind it.
I step into the water.
The heat hits my skin and my muscles lock for two seconds before they release. The water is almost too hot. Almost. The almost is the point, the edge of too much that tips into enough. I lower myself until the water covers my chest. Close my eyes.
The last two days are still in my body. The confrontation.
The kitchen table, Cole inside me, Dante in the chair watching.
The surveillance data that will protect me in a courtroom because a man I love went below every term I set at two in the morning while I slept with my hand on his chest. The night I spent alone in my apartment afterward, four locks engaged, staring at the ceiling.
The day I came back to Elm House because Elm House is where I feel safe and the feeling matters more than the fury.
The water is still. The steam curls. I open my eyes.
"Cole," I call. The house is small enough that speaking carries. "Dante."
Footsteps. Both of them. Cole from the kitchen, Dante from the couch. They appear in the bathroom doorway at the same time, Cole slightly ahead, Dante a step behind, and I feel both of them looking at me in the bath.
Cole's gaze moves over me. The water. The steam. His shoulders drop half an inch.
In the frame, Dante stays with his hands at his sides. Waiting. He's been waiting since the kitchen, since I told him the drawer closes permanently. Holding himself like someone who understands that the next move belongs to someone else.
"Get in," I say.
Cole looks at Dante. Dante looks at me.
"Both of you."
Cole moves first. He always does, the instinct to fill the space. But it's different tonight. Slower. His shirt comes off over his head. He folds it. Sets it on the sink. The folding is new. Usually, Cole throws clothes. Cole drops clothes on floors and drapes them over chairs.
His jeans. His boxers. He steps into the tub behind me and the water rises and his legs slide along the outside of mine.
His chest against my back. Warm skin against warm skin.
He settles. His arms come around me under the water, loose, careful, checking whether the reach is welcome before he commits to it.
I lean back into him. His chest solid behind me. My head against his shoulder.
Still in the doorway, Dante waits.
"D," Cole says. Quiet. "Come here."
Dante strips. Efficient. The black shirt, the jeans, each piece placed on the counter with the precision he brings to everything.
Naked, he stands at the edge of the tub.
The tattoos on his chest and arms visible in the bathroom light.
The piercings catching the overhead, six silver barbells in a row.
He's looking at me. His jaw tight. His eyes dark.
My hand extends over the edge of the tub. Palm up.
He takes it. Steps in. The water rises again, close to the rim now, three bodies in a bathtub built for one and a half. He sits facing us. His legs tangled with ours under the water. My feet against his thighs. His knees bent, crowding the porcelain.
"This bathtub is too small," he says.
"It's fine. You're too large."
"I'm proportional."
"You're enormous. Cole, tell him he's enormous."
"You're enormous, D."
"Thank you. Both of you. Very helpful."
The banter is thin, stretched over the anger neither of us is pretending away.
The water shifts between us. Small waves from three bodies finding their configuration. Cole's arms around my waist from behind. My feet against Dante's thighs. Dante's hands resting on my ankles under the water, his thumbs tracing circles on the bone.
"I'm still angry," I say.
Dante's thumbs pause. Resume.
"I know," he says.
"The anger is going to stay for a while. It doesn't go away because I'm sitting in a bathtub with you."
"I know."
"Hear me when I say the anger and this can exist in the same room. I can be furious at what you did and still want you here. Both things are real. If you need one to end before the other starts, if you need me to finish being angry before I can want you, then get out of the tub."
"I'm in the tub."
"Then stay in the tub."
"I'm staying."
Cole's arms tighten around my waist. His mouth presses against my shoulder. One kiss. Soft. The kind that asks nothing.
The steam thins. The water temperature drops by degrees, still warm, but the edge is gone. The almost-too-much settles into something my body can hold.
"Wash my hair," I say. To Dante.
His hands stay on my ankles. I can see him processing it, what it means, what it costs me to ask, what it costs him to be asked.
"Okay," he says.
Dante shifts in the tub. Water spills over the rim, a small cascade onto the tile that none of us acknowledges.
He moves closer, knees braced against the porcelain on either side of my legs.
His hand reaches for the shampoo on the ledge.
He pours it into his palm. Lavender fills the bathroom, the brand I've used since college, the scent that lives in the pillows, the towels, the spare room sheets that became our sheets.
His fingers slide into my hair from the front. At the temples first. Both hands, working the shampoo back through the strands in deliberate motions. His fingertips against my scalp. The pressure firm and even.
These hands. The same fingers that pressed the keys on a phone at 2 AM. The same thumbs that hovered over the keypad while I slept. The hands that dialed a number memorized at seventeen and the hands that are now pressing lavender into my scalp, and I let both truths sit in the water with us.
My eyes close.
Cole keeps me steady from behind. His arms around my waist, keeping me upright while Dante works through my hair from the front. The two of them coordinate without speaking, Cole holding me still while Dante works.
Dante's fingers move to the crown of my head.
The pressure changes, deeper, unhurried, circles that I feel in my jaw, my shoulders, the base of my skull.
The tension I've been carrying in my neck loosens by degrees.
One knot. Another. His thumbs press behind my ears and a sound comes out of me, low, involuntary, the sound the body makes when something held too tightly finally opens.
His hands still. His thumbs behind my ears. His mouth close to my forehead. His fingers press deeper into my scalp, the rhythm breaking, the care becoming something heavier.
"I love you," he says. Quiet. Into the steam.
His fingertips resume. The circles. The care. The words settling into the lavender, the warm water, the gentle pressure on my scalp.
"I hear you," I say.
"Tip your head back," he says.
I tip. The water reaches my hairline. Cole's palm cups the back of my skull, supporting. Dante pours water over my hair with one hand, cupped, careful, keeping the stream away from my eyes. His other follows the water, fingers combing through the strands, working the shampoo out.
The water runs down my neck. Over my shoulders. Dante follows it. His palm traces the path the water takes from my hair to my collarbone. Still gentle. His fingers trace my collarbone. The hollow at the base of my throat. Down.
His palm settles over my breast. Light. His thumb brushes the nipple once through the water.
My breath catches. Cole's arms tighten.
"Is this okay?" Dante asks. Low.
"Don't stop."
His thumb circles again. The water makes his touch slippery, warm, the friction reduced to almost nothing. My body arches into his hand. Cole's mouth on my neck from behind, lips, then teeth, the gentle scrape along the tendon.
"Both of you," I murmur. "Slow. Stay slow."
They do. Dante's hand on my breast, sliding lower as he eases back down into the water, his mouth following the path his palm traced.
Cole's hands slide from my waist to my hips, his fingers tracing the curve of my hip bones under the water.
The pace is deliberate. Patient. The opposite of every other time, the kitchen table, the intensity of the first time all three of us were together.
Dante's mouth reaches my stomach. His lips just above the waterline. His breath warm against wet skin. His hand slides from my breast down my ribs, over my hip, and his fingers brush between my legs underwater. Light. Careful.
I open my legs. The water shifts.