Chapter 43
Ayla
The washcloth touches my shoulder like he’s afraid of hurting me.
That alone is enough to make something in my chest go strange.
I sit between his legs in water that’s too warm, too soft, too sweet with marshmallow for any of this to feel real. Steam clings to my skin. His chest is solid against my back, one arm looped low around my middle like he doesn’t trust the water not to take me from him if he lets go for too long.
Or maybe that’s me.
Maybe he doesn’t trust me not to slip away.
I don’t know anymore.
I don’t know what any of this is.
The cloth drags over my collarbone. Down my arm. Slow. Careful. He doesn’t scrub. Doesn’t rush. Just wipes the day off me in steady strokes like there’s something he can remove if he keeps going long enough. Blood. Dirt. Fear. Gabriel. Betrayal. All of it.
I don’t move.
I don’t know if I’m allowed to.
And that makes my throat tighten.
Allowed.
Like this is something that could be taken away if I do the wrong thing. Breathe wrong. Flinch wrong. Say the wrong word and ruin whatever version of him this is before I even understand it.
He shifts the cloth and I feel him pause at my shoulder where the bruise darkened.
My body braces before I can stop it. His hand tightens once at my waist. Not enough to hurt.
Just enough to steady me.
The washcloth goes gentle there. Gentler than anywhere else.
My stomach twists.
I hate this.
Not because it feels bad. Because it doesn’t.
Because no one has ever touched me like this with nowhere to get to after. No impatience under it. No cruelty waiting beneath it. No hand smoothing me down just to take something once I’m still.
Just him.
Just water.
Just this awful, quiet tenderness I don’t know what to do with.
He drags the cloth down my forearm, lifts my wrist, and washes carefully around the bandage Vaska put there.
I stare at his hand.
At the way his fingers look against my skin.
At the fact that he could break me in half if he wanted to and instead he’s washing blood I can’t even see anymore out of the lines of my knuckles.
The room goes blurry for half a second.
I blink hard.
No.
I am not crying over a washcloth.
That would be pathetic even for me.
The cloth moves to the other arm.
His chin brushes my temple once when he leans in and my whole body goes tight.
From the shock of him being this close and not making it ugly.
The water shifts around us when he reaches lower, washing down my shin, my calf, the top of my foot. His hand stays firm at my middle, keeping me anchored between his legs like if he’s touching me everywhere else, he still needs one place that says I’m here.
Wanted.
Kept.
The thought makes heat crawl up my throat that has nothing to do with the bath.
I don’t understand this version of him.
The man who carved his name into my skin. The man who tied me to a radiator. The man who looked at me like he might kill me.
And this.
The same man holding me in water that smells like my body wash, wiping soap across my skin like he has all the time in the world to do it slowly.
I can’t make those things fit together.
I can’t make him fit.
My mouth opens before I decide to speak. “Why?”
The word is barely louder than the water.
For a second, I think he won’t answer.
His hand stills against my thigh.
The whole bathroom feels wrapped in steam and something too fragile to trust.
Then his mouth brushes my temple. “Because he touched what is mine.”
The words should make me go cold.
Part of me does.
The other part—the ruined, humiliating part, melts a little at the sheer certainty of it.
I hate that.
I stare at the water instead of him. At the little clouded trails of soap drifting around my knees.
“That’s not a real answer.”
His arm tightens across my waist. Not enough to trap. Enough to remind.
“It is.”
“No.” My voice comes out thin, rough around the edges. “That’s ownership. Not…” I trail off because I don’t even know what word I’m looking for.
He shifts behind me, big body heat and wet skin and the solid line of him at my back.
“It is for me.”
I close my eyes.
Of course it is.
Of course this impossible man would make tenderness sound like a threat and mean it as something sacred.
The washcloth drags over my knee. My other leg. Slow. Methodical. He works in silence for a minute, like once he’s said what he’s willing to say, that’s the end of it.
But it isn’t the end for me.
Not tonight.
Not after Gabriel. Not after the rope. Not after telling him the truth and watching his face change around it.
“We should talk about it.”
The words leave before I can stop them.
His hand pauses again and a heavy sigh escapes.
“About which part?”
“Any of it. All of it. You sound like nothing happened, like you don’t care.”
This time he does go still.
Not just his hands. All of him.
The entire length of his body against mine goes hard and silent, like I just hit some wire under the skin.
When he speaks, his voice is low enough that I feel it in my spine more than hear it.
“Because if I start saying exactly how much I care right now,” he says, “I will leave this tub and go tear Gabriel apart with my hands before I am finished putting you back together.”
My breath catches.
He dips the cloth into the water again. Wringing it out. Control in every movement.
Putting me back together.
“We don’t need to hash it all out. It’s done. And now you’re here. With me.”
My voice comes out small despite my best efforts. “Did you send Vaska in to kill me?””
He doesn’t answer immediately.
That answer is enough.
My throat tightens.
He must feel it because his hand leaves the cloth for a second and spreads over my stomach, wide and hot and heavy there.
“I sent him because I couldn’t trust myself,” he says. “There is a difference.”
“That’s a terrible difference.”
“For you, maybe.”
I almost laugh again. It would sound hysterical if I let it out.
His hand moves back to the washcloth. Up over my ribs this time.
The silence stretches until it hurts.
Then I say the thing I shouldn’t. “Did you want him to?”
His hand stops over my side.
I feel his breath touch the back of my neck once. Slow in. Slower out.
“No.”
The answer lands so fast and clean it hurts more than hesitation would have.
I look down at my fingers in the water.
Wrinkled skin. Healing scrapes. A body that feels like it belongs to too many people and not enough to me.
“I really need you to tell me if you’re angry at me.”
He shifts his hold so he can rinse the cloth again. I watch water run through his fingers.
“I was angry.”
“At me.”
“At everything.”
That I believe. I tilt my head back just enough to glance at him from the corner of my eye. Wet hair slicked back. Mouth hard. Blue eyes on the washcloth like cleaning my arm is a job that requires full concentration or someone dies.
Maybe it does.
“You were going to let someone else decide whether I lived.”
His jaw ticks.
“I was going to let someone else decide whether I could.”
There it is.
The thing under all of this. Not mercy. Not trust. Not even punishment.
Fear.
His fear.
That realization slips under my ribs quiet and deep. I look away too quickly, unsettled by the shape of it.
He rinses the cloth again, then slides it up over my neck. Along my jaw. Avoiding the worst swelling on my cheek with maddening precision.
I close my eyes because having them open feels too intimate now.
“I meant it,” I say.
He doesn’t ask what. Maybe he knows. Maybe he’s been waiting.
“I do love you.”
The washcloth stills against my throat. Every muscle in his arm locks around me.
I hate how hard my heart is pounding. Hate that I said it again when the first time already ruined everything. Hate that even now, bruised and exhausted and scraped raw, it’s still true.
His mouth is close to my ear when he finally speaks.
“You choose terrible moments.”
A wet, broken laugh slips out before I can stop it.
“Yeah.”
“Worst possible.”
“Probably.”
He says nothing after that.
Just lowers the cloth. Keeps washing me.
But the whole room feels different now. Heavier.
***
The morning starts at the townhouse.
I wake up slow and confused, warm sheets and gray light and Maksim already awake beside me, his hand at my hip checking the plastic over the tattoo with the kind of care that still doesn’t make sense in my head.
Later he tends to my face in the bathroom, quiet and precise, pressing cold against the swelling and studying the split in my lip like he’s memorizing damage he plans to answer for.
By the time I get dressed, I’m back in the clothes he bought me.
Boots.
Leather jacket.
Dark clothes that fit right and smell faintly like his house.
I shouldn’t feel relief pulling them on.
I do anyway.
It feels too much like myself.
Too much like the version of me that existed before yesterday cracked everything open.
And that should be strange, feeling normal in things he chose for me, but it isn’t. It steadies something in me I don’t want to look at too closely.
He takes me to the compound after that.
The drive is quiet. Not tense, exactly. Just full. Like there are too many things in the car with us that neither of us feels like naming.
I’ve only ever seen the compound like this in pieces before—coming in for meetings, leaving after, always with my nerves sharp and my focus somewhere else. In and out. Fast. Functional.
Morning changes it.
In daylight, it doesn’t feel like a fortress first.
It feels lived in.
A child darts across the street ahead of us chasing something bright and shrieking with laughter, and I blink before it even registers properly.
A child.
Then I notice more. Women on porches. A man carrying boxes while another holds a toddler on one hip.
Someone unloading groceries.
Two guards talking beside a gate like it’s just another workday, rifles slung over shoulders while life keeps moving around them.
Families.
The thought lands slowly.