Chapter Eight, Life
I stood under the hotel shower, arms braced against the tile.
The scalding water poured over me, but it didn’t help.
I still felt grimy—under my skin, behind my eyes.
London had been sunny all morning, like it was trying to trick people into thinking it wasn’t a miserable place to be.
But now, early evening, it was doing what London did best. Pouring down with rain.
My head throbbed with jet lag. I hadn’t slept properly in days, and my body was starting to crash. Not that I wanted sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, the dreams started again. Same scenes. Same faces. Breaking glass. Tranq guns. Reaper going down as I did the same. Heaven missing.
And I’d wake up pissed.
They weren’t nightmares. Not really. They were warnings. My subconscious trying to mess with me. I hated feeling useless. And more than anything, I hated that there was nothing I could do about any of it—yet.
I tilted my head back under the spray, letting the water run over my face until it stung.
My body was tense, coiled as if I were ready to be shot at.
My chest ached, not from pain but from the pressure of being this still.
I was trained for violence. Action. Chaos.
Passiveness didn’t come naturally. I’d only just about managed when I was watching Heaven, and the excitement of that had made the stillness go away.
This was not that.
Today had been long. And frustrating.
Meeting Sapphire hadn’t helped. I’d wanted to like her. I knew I was supposed to. She was someone Silver cared about. But the second I saw her, I’d judged her. Spoiled gang heiress. Fancy clothes. Perfect posture. A billionaire used to being obeyed. I’d made up my mind before she spoke.
Which made me a hypocrite.
She wasn’t useless. Her parents were murdered, and she was sad.
And she wasn’t sitting back and doing nothing.
No, she was leading a war. She’d earned her place, and some respect.
And Silver gave a shit about her. Which was more than I could say for myself and the people I was supposed to care about.
The guilt sat heavy. I stared at the drain and thought about the real reason I was probably inclined to find Sapphire annoying, and not nice.
About the woman I’d abandoned to help Silver, and never once tried to find.
The shower door opened.
“Need a hair tie,” Heaven said casually. “Don’t mind me. I promise not to touch your butt, even if you drop the soap.”
I swallowed the unusual bout of emotion in my throat. “Sure.”
“Atlas?” I didn’t look over. Her voice had already shifted.
She stepped into the shower fully clothed a second later.
“You’re still dressed,” I muttered, as I stared at Gio’s shirt getting soaked to her skin.
“Do you want me naked for moral support?” She grinned.
I tried to force a smile. “You want shower sex, malyshka?”
She laughed and peeled off her top. “Sure. But not now. I wanna take care of you.”
That made me pause.
“What?”
She didn’t answer immediately. She grabbed the shampoo, motioned for me to sit down on the shower ledge, lathering my hair the moment she could reach. Her fingers worked through the strands gently. No jokes. No sarcasm. Not an ounce of anything other than softness.
“What are you doing, Heaven?” I placed my hands on her ass, squeezing out of habit.
“You look sad,” she said. “I want to stop you from looking sad.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. So I said nothing.
She kept going, quiet for a change. Her nails scratched my scalp in a way that sent goosebumps down my spine. I closed my eyes and let her do it. Didn’t say a word or put up a fight. Then she rinsed the shampoo and moved to wash my body.
I grabbed her wrist. “You don’t need to do this. Let me wash you.”
She pulled her arm back, head shaking. “Nope. It’s my time to shine. So sit still and behave.”
When she was done, she stepped out and came back with a towel and fresh clothes. Then once I was dressed she took my hand and tugged me into bed. Pulled the covers over us and threw on a SpongeBob movie without asking. She curled against me, warm and close.
Then she started talking again. About the poor snack choice in the minibar. Bad British reality shows her friend Lola liked to watch. Something about a raccoon wearing lipstick on an advert. I let her talk, and I listened like I’d always done.
I listened to how soft, sweet, and happy she sounded.
After a while, I looked at her. Her hair was damp, her cheek pressed to my chest, her fingers moving against my ribs. She kept rambling, shifting closer, adjusting the blanket around my waist like I couldn’t do it myself. It should’ve felt ridiculous. It didn’t.
“Heaven?” I hummed as I trailed my fingers down her spine.
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry.”
She tilted her head to look at me. “What for?”
I exhaled slowly. “For messing with the evidence. For letting you think Reaper was guilty for so long. I saw how much happier you were with your revenge mission. How it stopped you from being so depressed. I just wanted to help you keep it up. I never thought about how manipulative that was—or how I could have just found the real killer for you. I failed. And I’m sorry.
If I’d dealt with things then, we wouldn’t be having to do all this now. ”
She blinked at me. “You don’t need to say sorry. I get it.”
I went to say something else, but she kissed me first.
Then she pulled back and looked me right in the eye.
“Atlas, you weren’t raised like most people.
You weren’t taught how to be… how to be a vanilla kind of guy.
I’m not going to hold you to the same standards as a regular man for certain things.
What you did made sense to you. It was done out of kindness, because you care about me.
I can’t be mad that you cared about me when I was all alone. ”
My throat felt tight. She didn’t make it a big deal, but that just made it worse somehow.
I didn’t have a reply.
She didn’t need me to.
She curled back into me and grabbed the remote. We lay there in silence, the dumb cartoon playing while she traced patterns on my skin.
I didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just let myself feel it.
The way her fingers moved over my chest, like I was something safe. The way her body stayed close, like she had nowhere else to be.
I hadn’t grown up with softness. Didn’t trust it. Didn’t know what to do with it when I got it. But right now, I didn’t question it because I didn’t feel like a weapon waiting to be used.
I felt like a person again.