Chapter 29 Shower Sins
Chapter twenty-nine
Shower Sins
Lena
His shower was bigger than my bedroom. We christened every tile.
But first, let me back up to the pharmacy disaster that preceded this morning's terrible decisions.
2 AM, three days ago. The 24-hour CVS where shame goes to die under fluorescent lights. I'm buying pregnancy tests—four, because anxiety requires backups, and my statistical brain needs multiple data points—when Tommy from Miguel's crew appears beside me like a Catholic guilt hallucination.
"Late night medical emergency?" he asks, eyes on my basket like it's a confession booth.
"Stomach flu," I lie, grabbing Pepto to complete my performance. "Going around the hospital."
He looks at the pregnancy tests like they're neon signs announcing my reproductive irresponsibility. "Right. Stomach flu. The kind that requires four pregnancy tests and—" he glances at my basket again, "—ovulation predictors?"
"I like to be thorough," I say, throwing in condoms for irony because apparently my disaster has a sense of humor.
"Miguel know about your... stomach flu?"
"Miguel doesn't own my uterus," I snap, then immediately regret it because that's basically a confession.
Tommy just nods, that specific nod that means Miguel will definitely know about my pharmacy run within the hour. "Be careful, hermana."
I pay in cash, exact change, like that makes this less of a disaster. My ovaries are composing their resignation letters while my prefrontal cortex files for early retirement.
Now, Wednesday morning, I'm standing in Zane's ridiculous shower with water hot enough to make my skin pink and my thoughts blur—somewhere between spa treatment and voluntary torture—watching him watch me like I'm something worth worshiping.
Which is problematic, because I should be calculating risks and statistics, but instead all I can think about is how his hands feel like salvation wrapped in sin.
"Your house is ridiculous," I tell him, trying to maintain conversation while my body has already decided this discussion is over.
"Comfortable," he corrects, his hands sliding around to cup my breasts, and suddenly I forget why I ever cared about square footage or property values.
The water cascades over us, and everything narrows to sensation—tile cold against my back, his body heat that's definitely burning me from the inside out, the way every nerve ending has suddenly decided to wake up and choose violence.
"You own a custom bike shop," I say, but the words are dissolving because his mouth is doing things that make language seem optional. "A successful one."
"Three shops," he murmurs against my shoulder, and I stop caring about his financial portfolio because his fingers have found that spot that makes me forget I have a degree. "Plus restoration work for collectors. Import/export. All legal, mostly."
"You're rich." The accusation comes out breathless.
"Does that matter?" He spins me around, pressing me against the glass wall that's going to need professional cleaning after this. "Would it change anything?"
"No," I admit, already pulling him closer. Rich or poor, he's still the disaster I've chosen. "I have my own money. My own career. My own terrible decision-making skills that operate independently of your bank account. I don't need—"
"Saving," he finishes, lifting me like I weigh nothing, my legs automatically wrapping around his waist, and suddenly I'm not thinking about anything except how empty I feel without him inside me. "Good. I'm terrible at being anyone's savior."
"Good thing I'm pre-damned then," I gasp as he enters me—no condom, because we're apparently committed to our poor choices with the dedication of athletes training for the Olympics.
The stretch is perfect, that edge between pleasure and pain that makes me forget my own name.
He presses me harder against the glass, the cold contrast to the hot water making every nerve ending sing, and I'm not thinking about statistics or probability—I'm just feeling.
Just taking. Just being this version of myself that doesn't need to analyze everything.
"God, you feel incredible," he groans, and I stop trying to respond with words because my body is having its own conversation with his—desperate, primal, completely beyond language.
"Good girl," he growls when I scratch down his back, definitely leaving marks. "Mark me. Make me yours."
"Not mine," I protest, but my body is calling me a liar, clenching around him like it never wants to let go.
"No?" He changes angles, hits that spot that makes me see colors that shouldn't exist, and I stop arguing because who cares about ownership when you're about to shatter into a thousand pieces? "Then why are you here?"
I can't answer because answering would require thinking and thinking is the enemy of this feeling building in my spine, spreading outward like wildfire.
I'm just sensation now—the stretch of him inside me, the water streaming over us, his hands gripping my hips hard enough to bruise, the sound of skin against skin echoing off expensive tile.
Dylan chooses that moment to knock on the bathroom door.
"Uncle Z? You in there? I brought bagels!"
We freeze. Zane's still inside me, I'm pressed against glass like an anatomy chart, and his seventeen-year-old nephew is ten feet away. My vagina is literally clenching around him in panic, which he definitely notices based on his groan.
"Five minutes!" Zane calls back, his voice impressively steady for someone currently balls-deep in disaster.
"Cool! I'll make coffee! Also, walls are thin, just FYI!"
We wait until footsteps retreat, then Zane starts laughing—actually laughing—his whole body shaking with it, which does interesting things considering our current position and the fact that his penis is still inside me at what I estimate to be a 47-degree angle.
"This isn't funny," I hiss, but I'm laughing too, because what else can you do when you're caught mid-coitus by a teenager bearing breakfast foods?
"This is hilarious," he corrects, thrusting once, making me gasp. "Also probably traumatizing if he figures it out."
"He's nineteen. He knows what shower sex sounds like. He probably has a PowerPoint about it."
"Thank you for that horrifying insight into teenage awareness."
He pulls out—we both wince at the loss—and sets me down carefully. I can immediately feel his cum dripping down my thigh, mixing with the water. "We should probably..."
"Yeah." But he's kissing me again, soft and domestic, and it's more dangerous than the sex. "After breakfast?"
"I have a shift at three."
"Plenty of time."
We clean up quickly, and I'm hyperaware that I'm about to meet his nephew while his cum is literally inside me, probably swimming around looking for eggs that may or may not have already been fertilized. My disaster life has reached new peaks of inappropriate.
I'm wearing one of his t-shirts and my jeans from yesterday, looking like a walk of shame sponsored by bad decisions and fertility anxiety, when Dylan properly introduces himself in the kitchen.
He's got Zane's bone structure but softer somehow, hasn't been sharpened by violence yet. His eyes are too knowing for seventeen.
"You're the nurse," he says, and it's not a question. "The one making him smile at his phone like an idiot."
"Dylan," Zane warns.
"What? It's true." Dylan turns back to me. "He's been different since you. Better different. Less likely to punch walls different."
"I don't punch walls," Zane protests.
"You literally punched a wall last month. I have photos. And video. And the repair bill."
I laugh, and something in Dylan's expression shifts—approval, maybe. "I like her," he announces to Zane. "Don't fuck it up."
"Language," Zane says automatically.
"You literally said 'fuck' twelve times in the shower," Dylan points out, then grins at our mortified faces. "Thin walls. Might want to remember that next time you're... discussing medical procedures. Very educational, by the way. I learned a lot about cervical mucus."
I bury my face in my hands. "Please kill me. I'm a medical professional. I can tell you exactly where to aim for quick death. Medulla oblongata. Quick and painless."
"Nah," Dylan says, sliding a bagel toward me. "You're good for him. Even if you are loud. And very thorough about biological processes."
"I'm going to die," I announce. "Right here. In this beautiful kitchen. Of mortification. My autopsy will list cause of death as 'acute embarrassment with complications from reproductive irresponsibility.'"
"Good girl," Zane murmurs, low enough that only I hear, and I kick him under the table while my vagina does a happy dance.
Dylan chatters through breakfast about school, about wanting to study engineering, about anything except the fact that he definitely heard us having inappropriate sex and my educational commentary about fertility windows.
He's smart, funny, damaged in that specific way that makes him careful with others' feelings.
"So," he says as he's leaving for school, "should I expect you to be here more often? Should I invest in better headphones?"
"Dylan," Zane warns.
"It's a legitimate question. I need to plan my study schedule around your... medical procedures."
"I hate everything," I mutter into my coffee.
"She'll be around," Zane tells him, and something in my chest gets tight.
"Cool. Maybe next time you can explain the ovulation thing more quietly. I got the general idea but the specifics were muffled by the... other sounds."
He leaves, driving a sensible Honda that suggests Zane's influence, and I finally check my phone.
Twenty-three messages from Izzy.
Izzy: BITCH WHERE ARE YOU
Izzy: Are you dead?
Izzy: Are you getting railed?
Izzy: Both?
Izzy: I know about the pharmacy run
Izzy: Tommy told his girlfriend who told her sister who told me
Izzy: FOUR TESTS?
Izzy: Take them
Izzy: Take them NOW
Izzy: He needs to know
Izzy: You need to know
Izzy: Your denial has reached pathological levels
Izzy: I'm coming over if you don't respond
Izzy: I know you're reading these
Izzy: Your read receipts are on you disaster
My blood goes cold. The four pregnancy tests hidden in various locations around my apartment and now in my purse. The ones I've been too terrified to take because Schrodinger's pregnancy is easier to handle than confirmed disaster.
"You okay?" Zane asks, noticing my face.
"Fine," I lie, shoving my phone away. "Just Izzy being Izzy."
"She still threatening to give me the shovel talk?"
"Something like that."
He kisses me then, soft and domestic, tasting like coffee and futures I shouldn't imagine but am already planning in terrifying detail.
"Stay today," he says against my lips.
"I have a shift at three."
"Until then."
I should say no. Should go home, take the tests, deal with whatever reality they reveal. Should stop this before it gets worse.
Instead, I say, "Okay. But first, take me back to bed and fuck me properly. The kind where I forget my own name and you forget I'm supposed to be at work."
"I thought you had anxiety about—"
"My anxiety can wait. Your dick can't." I'm already pulling him toward the bedroom, still dripping from the shower, leaving wet footprints on his expensive floors. "I need you inside me again. Now. Before my brain comes back online and starts making spreadsheets."
He catches me in the hallway, presses me against the wall. "Here?"
"Here. The bed. The kitchen counter. I don't care. Just—"
He cuts me off with a kiss that makes me forget why I ever cared about statistics, lifting me again, and I wrap myself around him like my life depends on it.
"Good girl," he murmurs against my neck. "Stop thinking. Just feel."
And for once, I listen. I stop calculating, stop analyzing, stop doing anything except taking what I need from this man who makes my disasters feel like features.
The tests wait in my purse like tomorrow's problem.
The truth waits in my body like a future I'm not ready to face.
But right now? Right now I'm just a woman getting thoroughly fucked by a man who makes me forget that consequences exist.
And honestly? That's exactly what I need.