Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Barret
Okay, I shouldn’t have gasped—but looking at her, all skin and bones with greenish-yellow bruises blooming in places that can barely be seen . . . it rips something out of me.
Eddie’s glare hits like a warning: don’t make this about you.
Cleo’s chin dips, embarrassment flashing across her face before she shuts it down. I’m not shaming her. It’s a reflex. Seeing the woman I love looking so breakable, like one more hard breath could splinter her, my soul aches.
I was already near the edge while we watched her run—first through the trees, then toward the cliff, like she’d finally found a straight line to somewhere far away from us, and this time we wouldn’t be able to save her.
We didn’t follow.
We swore we wouldn’t.
We let her be.
That’s not the whole truth. I went to the music room and played, hoping the sound might reach her. Hoping it would sit with her on that ledge, do the job my hands weren’t allowed to do.
Did it work? Who the fuck knows? But she came back, and I’m calling that a win.
“We should tell her,” I muttered, softer than a cuss. “About the island. That there’s nothing but us out here. The staff house is miles away. She won’t find a road, only more trees and rock.”
“Not yet,” Eddie responded. “Later. When it won’t feel like a fence.”
He’s right. I hate that he’s right.
Now we’re here in the bathroom trying to . . . not sure what. Finally care for her? At least make sure that she doesn’t get hypothermia.
The tub is deep, built for weekends filled with sin and sleep—we haven’t used it for that yet.
It’s just a tub that might be sold to someone if this version of us never works out.
Eddie tests the water with his wrist, adjusts the handle a notch, checks again.
“Cleo?” he asks, turning his body sideways so she can move past him without feeling penned in. “Can I help you in?”
She nods once.
He doesn’t look at me for permission—he looks at her. “May I touch your elbow?”
Another nod. He guides her with two fingers and a breath of space.
When she sinks into the water, her exhale sounds like it’s been waiting for years.
Goosebumps lift on her arms, then settle.
The bubbles hide what needs hiding. I stare at the tile and count grout lines because I am not a saint, and now is not the time for my body to audition for anything.
“Would it be okay if Barret or I got in the water with you?” Eddie asks.
I whip my head around. “What the fuck, man—”
“With swimsuits,” he adds, calm, a look thrown at me that says remember the plan. “Heat shares faster skin-to-skin. We’ll keep our hands where you can see them. It’s not sexual—just helping you warm up.”
I shut my mouth on the next protest because he’s not wrong and because if anyone should be in that bath with her, it isn’t the man who’s already half hard just being in the room. I squeeze my eyes shut and picture whales, bananas, anything but the curve of her knee.
Cleo gives me a small, lopsided smile that guts me. Then she looks at Eddie. “I don’t want to get between the two of you again,” she says. “No . . . that didn’t work then, remember?”
We both sigh simultaneously, a duet we didn’t rehearse.
“No,” Eddie says, gaze dropping to his knuckles like they offended him. “You made a decision to leave us. I’m guessing it was because learning about Caleb Wilder not being your biological father wrecked you.”
Her head snaps up. “You know?”
We nod.
“Rhodes told me,” Eddie says. “A few weeks after I saw you with Dorian in New York. He was fishing—thought I knew where you were hiding.” His mouth twists. “I didn’t.”
I cut in because I refuse to relive the day Eddie told me he’d seen her—two years gone, wrapped around another man, ring catching every flashbulb in the room. “The point is, not talking lets you assume things that weren’t happening,” I say. “We all did it. We fucked it up in silence.”
Her eyes close. “I remember.”
I don’t say the rest—the part about how that day shoved me to the edge of a bottle and a line I didn’t take. I didn’t. I’m still here. That’s enough confession for one bathroom and three people who don’t know where this might end.
Eddie clears his throat. “If you want, one of us . . . with you. We stop if you say stop.” He glances at me. “You good?”
I nod once, already moving. “I’ll change.”
I’m back in under a minute in a pair of trunks that feel like penance.
Eddie looks away while I climb in behind her.
The water laps my ribs. It’s warmer than the air outside and cooler than want.
I sit first, then say, “Okay. You can . . . if you want, you can lean.” I keep my hands on the rim, palms up, where she can see them.
She watches me, deciding. Then she turns and fits herself to my chest like a question mark finding its line. She’s all angles and the ache between them, but she’s here. I lift my arms an inch and stop. “Is this okay?” I ask.
“Yes,” she whispers. “Just . . . don’t trap me.”
“I won’t.” I let my forearms rest along the rim, a frame, not a cage.
Her head finds my shoulder in slow increments.
The bubbles hide us both. The salts smell like clean linen and something floral that doesn’t belong to a person.
Her breath changes; she is not exactly calmer—she is more present.
I match it because counting out loud would make this a technique, and I want this to be a moment.
Eddie kneels outside the tub, one hand on the faucet, watching the temperature like it could turn on us. He keeps his eyes on our faces, nowhere else. “Tell me if you need more heat,” he tells her. “Or less. Or music.”
“I can’t do music yet,” she says. “Too many rooms in it.”
“Okay,” he says simply.
The room feels small and huge all at once.
My thighs start to go numb, and I welcome it.
If discomfort is the price of not making this about my hunger, I’ll pay it until the water goes cold.
Cleo shifts, arranges herself the way you position a book you’re still not sure you want to read.
Every time she moves, I breathe through the flare of wanting and let it pass.
I’m here to be a human radiator and a spine she can borrow, nothing else.
“Do you still want to tell me about this place?” she asks, her voice so quiet that it almost sinks.
I glance at Eddie, who nods.
“It’s a small island. There’s us and a staff house miles away,” I explain. “There are no cars. We have a dock. A piece of road that thinks it’s a driveway. There’s a helipad in case we don’t want to take the boat. You’ll find trees and cliffs around. It’s geography, not punishment.”
“I ran,” she says. “There was only land until there wasn’t.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t jump.”
It takes all in me not to hug her, not to melt her in me to keep her safe. I simply say, “I know that too.”
Her hand slides into the water and finds my knee. Not a caress. A check. Location. Contact. “Okay?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say, voice shot.
Eddie’s gaze meets mine over her head. For once, there’s no power struggle in it. Only a question. I shake my head a fraction—don’t worry. He sits back on his heels, gives us space without leaving.
Cleo tilts her head so her mouth is near my collarbone. “I already told Eddie I don’t know how to do this,” she says. “Not just . . . this. Any of it. The bath. The house. You two.”
“You don’t have to know,” I say. “We can fuck it up and try again. As long as we talk about it.”
We sit. Water laps. The bubbles soften and break.
Eddie adds a trickle of warmth and asks permission with his eyes first, and when she nods, with his hand on the handle.
I can feel the temperature climb along my shins; she sighs, and that sound rolls through me like a promise I’m not allowed to make.
“Bear?” she whispers.
“Yes, baby?”
“Thank you for the music.”
My throat goes tight. “Anytime.”
Eddie stands, joints cracking in protest, he pretends not to feel.
He leans a shoulder against the doorframe, not crossing it, sentinel and man all at once.
His voice, when it comes, is quiet enough to be trusted.
“We’re not trying to make you choose,” he says.
“Not between us. Not between before and now. We’re just here as long as you need us—as you want us. ”
And I hear the rest without him saying it out loud. As long as you let us love you.
Cleo nods. “I don’t know if I can be . . . anything,” she says.
“You don’t have to be,” I tell her. “You can just . . . float.”
She huffs a breath that almost turns into a laugh. “In a tub?”
“In a life,” I say, surprising myself. “We’ll hold the sides.”
For a long time, we do nothing else. My arms stay where she asked me to keep them. Her back learns the shape of my chest and decides it can stand it for five minutes more. Eddie watches the steam thin and the salts dissolve to nothing. No one reaches for more. No one names this.
Her head grows heavier against me. (No—heavier is banned in my head. I choose fuller.) Her head settles. I don’t move.
“Five more,” she murmurs.
“Five,” I echo.
“Then I want tea,” she adds. “And the window open.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Eddie says, so soft it’s almost a prayer.
I close my eyes and try not to think about the bodies we were when we met, or the versions we ruined trying to fit a mold that never belonged to us. Right now, there is only warmth, a bathroom that smells like hope disguised as soap, and three people learning how to stay.
When the five minutes end—it’s her call, not mine—I help her stand by offering an elbow and not guiding it. She steps out with Eddie’s towel already waiting.
It’s almost domestic, almost ordinary, and that’s the miracle. Right now, this is just a girl in a bathroom asking for tea, and two men who are trying very hard to earn tomorrow.
Trying very hard not to fall apart after they saw her running and didn’t know if this time she’d be gone forever.
“Swimsuit off,” she says to me without looking back, and for a second, my brain misfires. Then the corner of her mouth lifts. “It’s soaked. You’ll drip all over the hall.”
“Right,” I say, voice wrecked. “I’ll change.”
She presses her cheek into the towel. “Don’t disappear,” she adds, casual and not casual at all.
“I won’t,” I tell her, and mean it so much it scares me.
Eddie meets my eyes over her head. No glare. No dare. Just a nod like two men on the same side of a very fragile line.
We will fuck this up. We will fix it. Not today. Today, we make tea, open a window, and pretend warmth is enough to build on. And if pretending is all we can do, we’ll do it until pretending becomes practice and practice becomes living.