CHAPTER 5 #4
"It's a statement of intent." I took his dusty hand and tugged him toward the panic room stairs. "Come on, Mercer. Let me take care of you for once."
The shower in the panic room was small—barely big enough for one person, let alone two.
We made it work anyway, pressed chest to chest under the spray, the water sluicing the drywall dust from Cole's hair and shoulders and running gray down the drain.
I washed his back with the cedar soap, tracing the topography of his scars—the burn marks, the old lacerations, the places where his body had been broken and rebuilt.
"How many fires?" I asked.
"Too many to count."
"How many people?"
"Also too many to count." He turned, catching my soapy hands in his. "But only one that mattered."
"Me?"
"You." He kissed the inside of my wrist. "You were the only one who ever came back."
"I didn't know I had a choice."
"Neither did I." The water beat a tattoo against his shoulders. "But you showed up at my bar anyway. Three months later. Looking for a job. Pretending you didn't recognize me."
"I did recognize you."
"I know."
"You let me pretend anyway."
"I wanted to see what would happen." He pulled me closer, our bodies slick and warm. "I wanted to see if you'd remember on your own. If you'd come to me without being pushed."
"And I did."
"You did."
The kiss started soft and grew teeth. His hand found the small of my back, pressing me against him, and I felt him hardening against my hip. My thighs clenched in response—an automatic reaction, a memory of the night before.
"In the shower?" I murmured against his mouth.
"Anywhere. Everywhere." He lifted me, my back hitting the cool tile, my legs wrapping around his waist. "Tell me if it's too much."
"It's never too much."
He entered me in one slow stroke. The angle was different here—deeper, more intense—and I gasped against his shoulder, my nails digging into the scarred skin of his back. The water streamed over both of us, slicking our hair to our skulls, filling the small bathroom with steam.
"Okay?" he asked.
"God, yes. Just—move. Please."
He moved. Not the frantic rhythm of the night before, not the deliberate pace of the bartop.
Something in between—steady and deep and relentless, each thrust sending sparks up my spine.
My head fell back against the tile. His mouth found my throat, my collarbone, the hollow where my pulse beat hardest.
"Cole." His name was a prayer. "Cole, I'm close."
"Let go. I've got you."
I shattered around him, my body clenching and releasing with each wave of pleasure. He followed moments later, burying his face in my neck as he came, his groan muffled against my skin.
We stayed like that for a long moment—pressed together, the water cooling, our breathing gradually slowing. Then he lowered me gently to the shower floor and reached for the soap.
"Let me," I said, taking it from him. "You've been taking care of everyone else all day. Let me take care of you."
He let me. He stood still while I washed the remaining dust from his hair, while I traced the soap along the lines of his arms and chest and thighs, while I rinsed him clean.
There was something intimate about it—more intimate, somehow, than the sex we'd just had.
The trust of allowing yourself to be cared for.
The vulnerability of admitting you needed it.
When we finally stumbled out of the shower and into the bed, the clock on the nightstand read two-thirty. The fern rustled in the ventilation draft. The tincture Cole had given me was doing its work, pulling me gently toward sleep.
"Stay," I murmured, already half-gone.
"Always," he said, and pulled the covers up around us both.
The panic room door was locked. The bar above was quiet. Somewhere in the studio, Marcus slept, or didn't sleep, or stared at the ceiling and thought about all the bridges he'd burned and the one his brother was trying to rebuild. And in the basement below, the woman with my face did not appear.
But I dreamed of her anyway.
In the dream, she was sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing Cole's t-shirt, her hair damp from the shower. She was smiling—a soft, sad smile, the kind you give someone you're about to disappoint.
"You're not real," I said.
"I'm as real as you are," she said. "Just different."
"Different how?"
She didn't answer. Instead, she reached out and touched my face—her fingers cool against my cheek—and then she leaned forward and whispered something in my ear. Something I couldn't hear. Something the dream wouldn't let me remember.
I woke with a gasp, my heart pounding, the fern's grow light casting strange shadows on the concrete walls. Cole stirred beside me but didn't wake.
The clock read four-seventeen. In the bar above us, the pendant lights still burned, their amber glow filtering down through the ventilation grates. And somewhere, impossibly, I could hear music. The jazz record, playing again. The woman's voice crooning about lost love and second chances.
I closed my eyes. Breathed. I told myself it was a dream. But I didn't believe it.