Chapter 20 Salt and Sorrow #2
His hands gripped my shoulders, gently turning me to face the mirror. “You’re not getting in the bath with your jeans on.”
Heat rushed to my cheeks as understanding hit. “Right, but… I can undress myself you know.”
“I know.” His fingers found the hem of my sports bra, barely grazing the skin at my waist. “But I want to take care of you.”
The words knocked something loose in my chest. I met his eyes in the mirror and found them darker than before, more serious. I nodded, not trusting my voice.
He was so careful with me. Reverent, almost, as he slowly pulled the sports bra up and over my head.
The fabric whispered as it fell to the tile.
I kept my eyes on his reflection, watching his jaw tighten as more skin came into view.
The bruises from sparring with Gabriel. The bite marks from Dominic.
Evidence of how hard I’d pushed myself today, all of it painted in flickering gold from the candlelight dancing across my skin.
His fingers traced a dark bruise along my ribs. “Does this hurt?”
I shook my head, barely able to speak. “Not anymore.”
His hands moved to my jeans, popping the button open before sliding the zipper down. The sound seemed impossibly loud in the quiet. He hooked his fingers into the waistband and pushed the denim down my hips, kneeling to help me step out of them.
When he stood again, his eyes swept over me achingly slow. Taking in every mark, every imperfection, every sign of strain. The way he looked at me made me feel breathless.
“You’re so beautiful, Jem,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
Before I could figure out how to respond, his hands were at my waist, lifting me like I weighed nothing. I gasped and grabbed his shoulders as he carried me the two steps to the tub and lowered me into the water.
The heat wrapped around me instantly. I sank deeper into the bubbles with a sound that was probably embarrassing, but I couldn’t find it in me to care. Every sore muscle seemed to sigh in relief.
“Better?” he asked through a smile I could hear in his voice.
“You have no idea.” I let my head fall back against the edge of the tub, my eyes slipping closed as the tension started to drain away from me.
Through the haze of warmth and steam, I heard him move closer. When I opened my eyes again, he’d rolled up his sleeves to his elbows and lowered himself on the edge of the tub, already reaching for the sponge.
“Turn around for me,” he said gently, dipping it into the water before wringing it out.
He didn’t have to tell me twice. I quickly swiveled in the tub, presenting my back to him.
The sponge touched my shoulder blade and I sighed contentedly.
Between our bond humming and the warm, sudsy sponge, I felt like I was floating on cloud nine.
He moved it in slow, methodical circles, gentle and unhurried, washing away the day as though he could erase everything that had happened to me with nothing more than the careful pass of his hands.
“These past few days, watching the spell rot spread through you. Watching you slip away from me one breath at a time.” The sponge paused between my shoulder blades. “I’ve never felt pain like that in my life.”
My throat thickened as something heavy dropped in my stomach.
“The hardest part was knowing I couldn’t do anything to stop it.
That I couldn’t fix it or take the pain away from you.
All I could do was sit there and watch you suffer.
” The sponge moved again, tracing down my spine.
“Pray the witches’ spell would work and that you’d still be here with me when it was over.
I don’t know what I would have done if it didn’t. ”
I could feel his pain pouring into me through the bond, mixing with my own and making it hard for me to tell where his sorrow ended and where mine began.
“And then today,” he continued, his thumb grazing my shoulder, “watching you fight Dominic’s compulsion over and over. Seeing you refuse to break even when you were exhausted… Fuck, Jem. I’ve never been prouder of you. Never been more impressed or in love with you than I was in that moment.”
“You’re giving me too much credit, Trace,” I managed, not feeling worthy of the high praise he was giving me. “If it weren’t for you and Dominic, I’d be dead three times over. Or worse.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, though. You’re so much stronger than you think.
” He said it with so much conviction that I almost believed him.
The sponge moved lower, washing along the curve of my spine.
“And every time you prove it. Every time you get back up when anyone else would stay down. It just reminds me why I fell in love with you in the first place. Why I keep falling in love with you more every day.”
A shiver of warmth raced over my skin.
A part of me wanted to argue, wanted to list all the times I’d failed miserably or needed saving.
But there was something about the way he said the words that made the rebuttal die in my throat.
Maybe because some hidden, selfish part of me wanted to believe I really was all those things.
Even if they only existed when I was looking at myself through his eyes.
“I don’t know that I deserve all of this, Trace, but thank you.”
He chuckled. “For what? Telling you the truth?”
“No.” I met his eyes over my shoulder. “For always making me feel like something when I feel like nothing.”
“You don’t have to thank me for that. Because you’re not just ‘something’. You’re everything to me, Jem,” he said, the muscle in his jaw working as the words left him. “You know that, right?”
I nodded and turned back around, unable to face him any longer. To let him see the tears forming in my eyes or the guilt that was eating away at my heart. The water lapped against the sides of the tub as he continued washing me.
His touch almost felt meditative, like he needed this as much as I did. Like taking care of me was the only thing keeping him anchored. We stayed like that for a while, neither one of us speaking, his hands moving over my skin with a reverence that made my chest ache.
“Can I ask you something?” he asked after a little while.
“Anything.”
He was quiet for a beat, the sponge making lazy circles against my back, as though he needed a moment to get his thoughts in order. When he finally spoke, his voice came out careful. Almost cautious, like he was afraid of what the answer might be.
“Does it feel different now? Between us?” he asked. “Now that the spell is broken.”
My stomach dropped because I knew what he was really asking.
He wasn’t talking about the bond or the magic behind it.
He was asking if my feelings for him, for Dominic, had changed since the deadly sins spell was broken.
If what I’d said about not being able to choose between them, about all the things we had done in the last couple of weeks, were nothing more than the spell talking through me.
And god, I wished I had an easy answer for him.
But the truth was messy and complicated and painful in ways I didn’t know how to articulate.
The shame was real. The shame for what had happened between the three of us while under the spell’s influence.
The shame for how easily I had surrendered to a desire I’d spent so long trying to keep behind a wall.
For how willing I’d been to fall apart in their hands when I should have been holding the line.
That part hadn’t gone away. I wasn’t sure it ever would.
But the feelings underneath? The love I had for both of them? Those weren’t a side effect of any spell. Those had been there long before Carly ever planted that talisman in our home, and they were still here now that it was gone.
If anything, the anchoring spell had only made them more impossible to ignore.
And that was what scared me the most. Not the fact that I loved them both.
I’d made my reluctant peace with that ugly truth months ago.
What scared me now was where it was all heading.
Because the bond hadn’t softened the impossibility of the situation.
It had just locked us into it more permanently.
Eventually, one of them was going to want more than I could give.
Eventually, one of them would ask me to choose.
And this time, my choice not to choose at all might be the thing that broke them both for good.
But I couldn’t tell him any of that right now. Not when he’d just laid his soul bare for me. Not when he was asking me a question I knew was already costing him to ask.
“I don’t know,” I said softly, and it was the most honest thing I could give him.
“I feel… guilty. About what happened. About not being in control of myself. About the choices I made under the spell.” I paused, trying to find the right words.
“But what I feel for you? That hasn’t changed at all.
Not even a little bit, and I know it never will. ”
I could feel his response through the bond, immediate and unmistakable. My words had eased something in him, even if they hadn’t touched all of it.
“And Dominic?” he asked after a short pause.
There it was. The part I couldn’t reach. Couldn’t ease for him. And as much as I wanted to tell him exactly what he wanted to hear, I couldn’t just sit here and lie to him. Not after everything we’d been through.
“That’s not gone either,” I admitted, dropping my head.
The sponge stopped moving. I could feel the words land somewhere I hadn’t meant to put them. I’d hurt him. I could feel it through the bond, that flash of pain he tried to bury before I could fully grasp it.
“I’m so sorry, Trace,” I said, the words breaking apart on my tongue. “I wish I—”
“Don’t.” His hand gently gripped my shoulder, stopping me. “Don’t apologize for being honest with me. I asked. I wanted to know.”
I shook my head. “But it hurt you.”
“Yeah,” he said, not bothering to deny it as his thumb traced a small circle against my skin. “But I’d rather hurt from the truth than live in a lie.”
He set the sponge aside and stood, his hand trailing from my shoulder as he moved.
I looked up to meet his eyes again, to apologize again, but something in his expression stopped me.
It wasn’t disappointment or even anger as I would have expected.
It was more like the look of a man who had made his peace with loving me on whatever terms life kept handing him, because the alternative—not having me at all—had never really been on the table for him to begin with.
A man who had already decided that loving me through this was a choice he was going to keep making, no matter what it asked of him.
“I meant what I said earlier, Jem. You’re everything to me. Everything.” He moved toward the door, then glanced back one more time. “That doesn’t change just because you love him too.”
The door clicked shut behind him, leaving me alone with the steam and the bubbles and the ache in my chest that felt like it might never heal.