Chapter 24 - Dove
The shower fills with steam, but I can’t get warm. The water beats down, scalding, burning my skin red, but inside I’m frozen.
Palms flat on the tile, forehead pressed against the wall, I let the hiss of the shower drown everything else.
But it doesn’t drown the image of Wolf on the floor, curled up, arms around his head, scars crisscrossing every inch of his torso.
I squeeze my eyes shut and still see his face, so pale and strained with fear. His body trembling under the spray. And his sobs. Christ, those sobs. They splintered me into so many pieces.
My chest cracks open, bleeding and bare.
The Strakhs didn’t push me away. Without even meaning to, Monty claimed me in that room. Frankie included me in her we. Even Leo and Kody, suspicious as they are, let me stay.
Their kindness tips me over, and I cry harder. I’m not used to it. I don’t know what to do with it.
I care about Wolf. More than I should. More than I can admit. And I know what I need to do.
If I leave town, Jag will follow me. That’s what he does. He’ll keep his cameras on me and forget all about Wolf. He won’t hurt Wolf if I’m gone. He only kills men who stand between us.
The thought feels noble for half a second. Then it splits me down the middle.
Leaving Wolf… It’ll ruin me beyond repair.
I choke on a breath, but it caves into a sob. Then another. Soon I’m bent in half, fists pressed against the tile, water mingling with hot tears. Crying in a way that hollows out my insides. Ugly, violent, body-wracking sobs.
The water pours over me, steam swarming down my throat, and I’m hit with déjà vu. I’m shaking like him, like Wolf, fighting shadows I can’t escape.
I slide down the wall to the wet floor, knees to my chest, forehead to my arms, the roar of the shower covering the sound of me falling apart.
If I leave, I’ll save him.
If I leave, I’ll never encounter another soul like Wolfson Strakh.
The water finally runs lukewarm, then cold, but I don’t move. I sit there until my skin wrinkles, until my sobs run dry, until all that’s left is an empty throb behind my eyes.
Then I drag myself up.
I scrub at my face and scour my body, trying to wash off the shame, the grease, and the grief.
When I step out, I towel myself down hard, punishing. I yank on a shirt and sleep shorts and twist my drippy blue hair into a tight braid over my shoulder.
In the mirror, my eyes are red, my cheeks blotched. I don’t look like someone who belongs in this house, in their circle. I look like someone who stumbled into a family she has no right to know.
But I’ll face them anyway.
I’ll stay until Wolf is well enough, steady enough, to have a conversation about this. About me leaving. About why I have to go.
I won’t disappear on him. I couldn’t do that. Not after today.
Smoothing my face with the heels of my palms, I square my shoulders and bite down the leftover tears until all that remains is a dull ache.
Steam swirls around me as I emerge from the bathroom. And I stop cold in the doorway.
“Wolf?”
He perches on the edge of my bed, wearing a purple housecoat that hides every scar. But nothing covers the damage on his face.
He looks haggard, ashen, lips drained of color, and shadows dug deep under his eyes. His hair hangs in damp, messy ropes. He’s been wrung out for hours, every drop of fight and fury squeezed from him.
His eyes lift to mine, all those vivid shades of blue reflecting in the light.
“You’re spooked.” A frown ghosts across his mouth. “Monty told me about the man on the pier. Your security team saw Jag there, too.”
“You have more important things—”
“Nothing’s more important than you.” He pauses, staring at his hands, anxiously twiddling his thumbs. “But Jag and the stalker on the pier didn’t spook you. I did. My breakdown. I owe you an explanation.”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“You deserve a conversation, and I’ll give that to you. I’ll tell you what happened today. And what happened last year. And the twenty-three years before that.” His thumbs stop moving, and he slowly drags his eyes to mine. “But not tonight.”
My throat tightens.
“Tonight….” He swallows, and his voice dips with vulnerability. “I just want to sleep beside you if you’ll allow that.”
How could I ever refuse him? I nod rapidly, rushing forward until my feet land between his. “Can I hug you?”
For a second, he regards me, a twitch feathering at the corner of his eye. Then he rises from the bed, the movement forcing me to shuffle back. He opens his arms. Not wide or theatrical. Just enough. Just for me.
I go to him, falling into him, my cheek smashing against his chest, and my arms forming a vise around his broad frame. The scents of soap, rain, and his signature, feral notes of the wild flood me with relief.
The physical contact does swirly, glowy things to my heart. He’s solid. So damn strong and solid. Heat radiates through the thin layers of fabric between us, and I want to sink into it, lose myself there.
His arms cinch around me, rock-hard but trembling, like he’s terrified I’ll vanish if he loosens his grip.
We both need this. Affection, anchoring, and proof of life.
But there’s something else. Something hard and urgent, jabbing between us.
I flinch, not away, but in shock. The timing isn’t great after his catatonic breakdown on the shower floor. I didn’t expect him to be thinking about sex. But if he wants to take me right here, right now, I’ll give myself to him without hesitation. Happily. Willingly. Desperately.
I move my hand lower, tracing the rigid shape of him.
“Dove.” He groans darkly and seizes my wrist, shaking his head. “No.”
“I’m so sorry.” I jerk my hand away.
“Trust me. I’m the one who’s sorry. My head’s in a fucked-up place.
” He rests his forehead against mine and recaptures my wrist. “My body doesn’t care.
It’ll always react when you touch me. But tonight…
” His grip softens, thumb brushing my skin.
“I can’t. Not until we talk, okay? Tonight, I just want to be near you.
With you. Just us in the present moment. ”
What he wants, it’s more intimate than anything physical he could’ve asked of me. It’s… Gentle. Strange, but gentle. No weight of expectation pressing down. No hands reaching for more. Just him, here, choosing me without an angle.
He came to my room to be with me, not to take from me. That’s new. That’s different. With men, I’ve never had this.
So I nod, letting my shoulders relax, and wait for his lead.
He slides back onto the bed, watching me intensely as he lowers himself onto his side. I follow, curling onto mine, facing him.
Our hands find each other in the middle, fingers tangling, palms hot with shared pulse.
We don’t speak. His eyes stay on me, hooded but soft, carrying too many memories, too much pain. I hold his gaze, searching the flickers there, mesmerized by how exhaustion stripped away the years, exposing so much of his innocence.
The silence grows heavy, but not oppressive. It’s comfortable, despite all the things neither of us can say.
Are you okay? He’s not okay.
Do you want to talk? He doesn’t want to talk about it.
Did you have sex with Jag? I don’t want to think about it.
I squeeze his hand, and he squeezes back.
This intimacy… I’ve never experienced anything like it with anyone else. Intimacy without sex. Without chatter. Just a deep, cozy closeness between two people content to watch each other, breath syncing in the quiet.
His eyes drift over my face, mine over his, both of us caught in some wordless spell. The world falls away, leaving only the rhythm of our lungs, the warmth of our hands, and the quiet hum of noisy thoughts.
Then, after a long beat, his mouth bounces at the corner. “Have you heard the fairy tale about the drag queen, the heart doctor, and the princess bride?”
“No, but I’d love to hear it.”
“It’s dark.”
“Have you met me?”
“Fair enough. I’ll skip the buildup and start at the good part.” He stretches out his legs, linking them around mine. “The drag queen jumps. Right off the cliff. Sequins, eyeliner, fuck-me boots, the whole shebang. Splat. Right into the icy river, she goes. Drowns, dies, done. Curtain closed.”
“But she didn’t die.”
“Lord knows she almost met him.” He hauls in a long, shaky breath.
“But as usual, the Mighty God is a no-show. Instead, she meets the doctor. The white-coat kind that hands out medicine and miracles. He drags the queen out of the water, sews her back together, and saves her life. Sounds like a stand-up guy, right?”
“I feel a twist coming.”
“All the best fairy tales have one. But this one comes with trigger warnings. Can you handle that?”
“I don’t have triggers.”
“We’ll see. As it turns out, the fancy little heart doctor has a few screws loose.
But screwdrivers aren’t his specialty. Scalpels are.
He loves the way they shine under the fluorescent lights, and for the next ten months, he demonstrates his mad skills.
Slice, hack, cut, stab. Anatomy turned into art. ”
My hands twitch in the warm clutch of his. He’s telling me how he got the scars, and it wasn’t by the psychopath who raised him. Who the fuck is this doctor?
“The queen learns fast. Learns too much.” He shifts, his eyes losing focus. “One night, the doctor hosts a dinner party and invites all the people he killed and all the people he wants to kill. The lion, the bear, Dorothy, and Rich Daddy… All the queen’s friends are there.”
Wolf’s family. I can gather that much. But the rest? I don’t know. He’s using cryptic symbolism to express his trauma. Maybe it’s the only way he can talk about it.
I won’t question him. I’m just glad he’s talking.
“The doctor raped Dorothy right there on the table.” His voice darkens, making my blood run cold.
Frankie. That kind, gentle woman. The unspeakable hell this family has endured. They’ve suffered too much.
“Too dark?” Wolf searches my eyes.
“Keep going.”
“While the doctor’s busy admiring his reflection in the blade, the queen steals the scalpel. Plucks it right out of the ruby slippers. The doctor laughs, saying, ‘You wouldn’t dare.’ Oh, she dares. She chops him into kibble-sized bits and feeds them to the wolves waiting in the dark.”
“He’s dead.” I release a shuddering breath.
“Deader than dead. And now the queen is free. She goes out into the world, looking for her Magic Kingdom, wandering, wandering, sequins dulled, eyeliner running. And she’s…
” His voice goes achingly soft. “She’s lost. Because what’s a kingdom without a princess?
Who wants a throne when there’s no one to share it with? ”
Oh, Wolf.
A kingdom, a worthy princess, and a happily ever after. He deserves nothing less. Goddammit, I want to be the one beside him, holding his hand as he climbs his throne.
But I’m no princess. I’m an orphan mechanic with grease under my fingernails and too many facial piercings. Jag and I are a curse. Whoever we touch, ruin follows.
“I’ll tell you the next part, but you already know it.
” He hooks an arm around my waist and tugs my body flush against his.
“A princess bride materializes out of the fog. She isn’t in a tower.
She isn’t locked in chains. She’s running down the street, running from something, always running.
She doesn’t know that she doesn’t need to run anymore.
The queen will save her, and she’ll save the queen right back.
” He narrows his eyes. “To be continued…”
He waits for me to say something, but I can only lie there and chew on the words.
That queen is him. Sequins, eyeliner, fuck-me boots, he dresses in pieces of feminine flair, like camouflage, like maybe he’s trying to outrun himself. Like if he layers enough glitter and lace over the scars, no one will see the boy still bleeding underneath.
“Aren’t you going to ask me the point of the story?” He gives me a crooked grin, the one that dares me to misunderstand him.
“Nope. I get it.”
The point of the story is him. I think about the eyeliner, rain boots, and feather boas. He isn’t mocking women. He isn’t mocking himself. He’s testing something. Or maybe confessing something without using plain words.
Does he want to be a drag queen in real life? Is his identity unraveling and rethreading? Or is it just Wolf being Wolf, eccentric, theatrical, and hiding the crisis in his chest behind eyeliner and satire?
I don’t know.
But I know this. The way he told that story, he wasn’t laughing at the drag queen. He was mourning her. My chest aches with the weight of it, because maybe Wolf doesn’t know who the hell he is, but for tonight, in his fairy tale, he wants to be the one worth saving.
“You would make a beautiful drag queen, Wolf.”
“That’s not the point.”
“You’ll build your own magic kingdom, and princesses will line up to share it with you.”
“Also, not the point, Buttercup. Were you even listening?”
“I heard every word.”
“Then you know there’s only one princess bride. The one. And I already found her.”
“What if she hurts you?”
“What if she doesn’t?”
I’m no princess, and if I stay, there will be only tragedy and death in his ever after.
“Thank you for sharing your story with me.” I tentatively trace a finger along the sculpted line of his jaw. “You didn’t have to, and I promise to keep it safe.”
“It’s just a story.”
I wish that were true. But I don’t say that. “Will you tell me more fairy tales about the drag queen?”
“I’ll tell you my favorite.” He burrows in closer, the effervescent wildness returning to his eyes.
“The drag queen wants to go to Disney World, but she can’t travel to the Magic Kingdom without her pets—the lion and the bear.
When she tells them to take her, the lion is all doom and gloom, crying, ‘We’re going to die.
’ And the bear’s like, ‘Is there vodka? I love vodka. Grunt. Grunt.’ To which the queen says, ‘Yes, you small-minded beast. Of course, there’s vodka… ’”
I listen, breathless, captivated, and devastated as he shares glimpses into his imprisoned childhood with Leo and Kody. The harrowing helplessness they must have felt, trapped and motherless, with only their captor to raise them.
But they escaped. They learned how to fly, left the horrors behind, and built a happy life on this paradise island.
They’re finally safe, and they need to stay that way.