Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
Rhys
I pull up outside the house and cut the engine. She's leaning against the window, eyes closed, and I consider just sitting here with her until she shows she's ready to move. But then she reaches for the door handle and I stop her with a light hand on her shoulder.
“It's okay. I can walk.” Her voice comes out thin, worn down to nothing, and it scares me to even leave her for the two seconds it'll take to get to her side.
“Humour me.” I'm around the car and opening her door before she can argue, not that she tries.
That's the part that gets me. Alexia doesn't let anyone carry her, not emotionally, not mentally, and certainly not physically.
Tonight she just drags her legs out of the car, loops an arm around my neck, and lets her head drop against my shoulder.
I slide my arms under her thighs and lift her to me.
“I can walk, I promise,” she mutters into my collar, but no part of her body agrees. I carry her through the front door and down the hall without another word from either of us.
She'd barely spoken in the car. Every few minutes I'd ask if she was okay, if she needed anything.
She'd answer in as few words as she could. Eventually I’d stopped asking and just drove, one hand finding hers in the space between, squeezing it now and then and holding my breath until she squeezed back.
I kick her bedroom door open, letting it sink in for just a moment how it feels completely normal to be carrying her toward what is actually my bed. I shake off the feeling and lay her down gently.
“Do you need anything?” I whisper.
“Mm.” Her eyes are already half shut. “A bath. I fell on the floor of your bar and I can only imagine what's currently living in my hair.”
It's the most she's said since the bar, and it gets a ghost of a smile out of me. “Don't tell Zachary you said that. He takes an obscene amount of pride in how clean his bars are.”
“I won't tell if you don't.”
“It'll be our little secret.” A small, shared thing. I can't help feeling the warmth of it in the space between us. Then I think about the other secret the two of us are keeping — the one that isn't sweet at all, the one I've been carrying around for six years — and the smile fades.
I grab the blanket off the bed and pull it around her shoulders. “I'll be right back. Just sit there, okay?” I say, before running to the bathroom.
When I come back she's on the bed, but there's a pile of her clothes on the floor at her feet, and she's down to her underwear.
The blanket is held loosely round her, but her hands can't be bothered holding it shut.
A graze along her hairline is turning purple at the edges, and there's a dark bruise blooming on her hip I didn't see earlier. I fucking hate seeing her hurt.
“Alright, up you get.” I hold out a hand.
She takes it, and stands, and the blanket slips.
It catches me off guard, and I feel my hand grip hers in response.
I've seen her naked before. I've had her under my hands before.
But there's something about the soft light filtering from the bathroom, illuminating her almost bare body, the fact that she's hurt and exhausted and doesn't seem to have the energy left to care, that knocks something loose in me anyway.
“I'm too tired for modesty right now,” she says, catching the look on my face before I can smooth it out. “Just pretend I'm a mannequin or something.”
“Right. A mannequin.” I keep my voice even. “I'll try to remember that.” Mannequins make people have terribly indecent thoughts, right? Don't answer that, I don't want to know.
She gives me a pointed look, bloodshot and tired but still full of meaning. “You're doing a terrible job of it already.”
“Hey, all I said was that I'd try.”
That gets a small, tired laugh out of her.
We walk to the bathroom together, her hand heavy on my arm, one of mine barely grazing the bare skin of her back, just enough for her to know it's there if she needs it.
Once we get to the edge of the tub and I'm satisfied she's steady, I turn around, eyes shut, one hand held out ready for her.
The last of her clothes hit the floor, and then I feel the weight of her using me for support and hear the water shift as she steps in.
“You can look now,” she sighs. “Mannequin is fully submerged.”
I open my eyes. She's sunk down deep into the water, the thin layer of bubbles lapping against her collarbones, knees drawn up, hair already damp at the ends.
“Is the water okay?”
“Hmm,” she says with a single nod that makes her wince. “It's perfect.”
“Okay. Google says it shouldn't be too hot. Something about blood pressure. But we can keep adding some more warm water if it cools too much.” I sit down on the edge of the tub. “Take as long as you need. I'll be here.”
She doesn't answer, just closes her eyes and lets her head fall back against the porcelain, and for a while neither of us says anything.
After a few minutes she opens her eyes, reaches for the soap, and starts washing her arms, slow, careful of the bruises.
I watch the water ripple round her and wonder what she's thinking about.
As for me, I’m trying not to think about what I’d heard the other guys say about what’s been going on between them.
It doesn’t matter. As I’d said, tonight is just about taking care of her.
And I’m not going to give her a single moment of discomfort, of worry, of grief, not now that she’s here with me.
She’s not going to feel anything but completely and utter safety. At least I can give her that.
When she's done washing, she drops the soap back on the dish, closes her eyes, and sinks a little lower, letting the water curl against the curve of her throat.
“I like sitting in the silence with you,” she says, voice almost inaudible, after whole minutes have ticked by with nothing but the sound of our breathing.
My fingertips dip to the first knuckle into the water to check the temperature, and I think I see her leg move almost imperceptibly closer under the bubbles. “I guess I don't really give you much choice most of the time.”
That gets a small huff of laughter out of her. “No. But it's never bothered me. That is...” She trails off.
I give her time to continue, but when she doesn't, I gently prompt. “Tell me.”
“It never bothered me, except for the one time I really needed you to have said something. And you didn't.”
The knife that's lodged permanently between my fourth and fifth ribs pushes in deeper and twists.
I try to think of something to say, anything to make it better, but there's nothing. So I say the only thing there is to express in this moment. “I'm sorry, Alexi. I made a mistake.”
Her eyes open, find mine, and there's something cautious in their depths, something I wish I could wash away. “Are you? Sorry?”
“You doubt it?”
“I don't know. You don't make mistakes.” She shrugs, one glistening shoulder rising out of the water and back down. “I've never known you do anything without thinking it through first. Every angle. Every consequence. So you must've known what the result would be of what you did.”
“Would you believe me if I told you it was the most reckless thing I've ever done?”
“The leaving.” She watches me carefully for the answer. “Or the coming to me in the first place.”
“Everything I've done, when it comes to you.” My fingers dip further, grazing the very peak of her knee. “I can't do anything around you with my usual caution. You wreak havoc with my mind, with my whole life.”
She doesn't say anything to that, just holds my eyes for a long moment before trying to reach the face cloth I left on the other edge of the tub. She attempts to hide a grimace before laying back, giving up with a small exhale.
“I've got you.” I pick up the cloth and shuffle so I'm behind her on the edge of the tub, dabbing it over her cheeks, her forehead, working carefully round the graze at her hairline. She goes very still and lets me, eyes following me the whole time.
“You might be right about things living in your hair,” I say.
Her hand comes up and she flicks me with a sprinkling of water, but then hisses in obvious pain. The sound empties me of any joviality.
“What hurts?”
“It's nothing.” She catches the way I'm looking at her and rolls her eyes. “I underestimated how much I hurt my wrist when I fell. I'm not sure I can wash my hair.”
“Let me.” I grab a mug from the sink and kneel behind her, scooping water from the tub and pouring it gently over her head.
Then, I push my sleeves up to my elbows and gently work the shampoo slowly through her long wavy hair.
She's quiet under the touch of my fingers, eyes shut.
Every so often I ask if she's all right and she murmurs something that sounds like “yes, that feels so good”, and I keep going.
When I'm done she leans back against the edge of the tub, hair slicked flat, the bubbles gone thin enough now that I know I'll be able to make out the shape of her under the water if I let myself look.
“Do you think I'm much different?” she asks, eyes still closed. “Compared to back then.”
“Not in any of the ways that matter.”
“Mouthy?” She chuckles.
“That.” I trace a finger down the line of her neck, brushing a wayward bubble off her skin, and she shivers. “But also fiercely opinionated, tender when you least expect it, hard when you expect softness, the little dappled sunlight in a dark and lonely woods.”
A little smile ghosts her lips. “I like that you see me that way. Saw me that way.”
“No other way to see you.”
She sighs and I can't help but wonder what she makes of my words. “I sound delightful.”
“You're also infuriating beyond belief, have an awful singing voice, can’t change lanes without causing near accidents, and judgemental to a fault.”
Her eyes look up at me, wide, surprised, but not offended.
So I finish it off. “And the only person in the entire world who can make me say the things I'm thinking, whether I want to or not. Whether I should or not.”
Those wide eyes soften, and for a moment I wonder who I need to sell my soul to, to get to fall into those irises forever.
“And have you said everything you shouldn't say tonight?” she presses.
I brush an errant drop of water off her cheek. “Not yet.” A line of goosebumps rises up on her skin following my touch. “You're cold. Need more hot water?”
Her voice is whisper quiet. “It's not the water.”
“Then what is it, Alexi?”
“If I tell you, you might run again.”
The words hang there, quiet and unguarded, and something in my chest tightens and loosens at the same time.
“Would you believe me if I told you I would never run again?”
She shakes her head. “I don't know if I could risk it. I don't know if I could survive it a second time.”
I know that I deserve that. Before I can think it over, the water starts to slosh and she starts to move, standing up.
I help her out of the tub, holding the towel open and wrapping her in it, and despite her protests, I carry her back through to the bedroom.
Her body is relaxed but not limp in my arms like before, simply warm and pliable.
Once I've helped her dry her body, her hair, I pull one of my own shirts over her head.
The blanket gets pulled aside, and she climbs into bed and curls onto her side, one hand tucked under the pillow, watching me with her eyes half shut.
“I know it's your bar, and you had to be there,” she says, voice already thick with fatigue. “But I'm glad you came.”
I sit down on the edge of the mattress, close enough to feel the warmth of the bath coming off her, and for a second I don't trust myself to say anything at all.
She yawns and mumbles, “I didn't want to want you there. But when I saw you, I was glad. Even after all this time. I feel like I'm always looking for you. Isn't that silly?”
I nod, knowing just what that's like. What it’s like to think every room that is missing her, is incomplete.
“There is nothing in this entire cosmos that would have kept me from getting to you tonight.” I pause.
“I’m not an easy man to rattle. You'd know that better than anyone.” My jaw works once before I make myself keep going.
“But tonight, when I heard you'd been hurt, I felt unmoored from my own sanity.
And it wasn't losing control I was afraid of. It was the thought of losing you forever.”
A soft sadness softens her eyes. “You’ll never know what it’s like to lose me. Not entirely. Not like I already lost you, Rhys.”
I run the back of my finger along her soft, pink cheek. “You never lost me, beautiful. Not even a little bit.”
She takes a deep breath, and her eyes flutter closed. “I'm going to sleep now,” she says. “Will you be here when I wake up?”
I lean over and tuck a curl behind her ear. “If you want me to be.”
She falls asleep before I get an answer. But I know I will be here, no matter what the answer would have been.