My eyes flicker to the other door, the one that leads to the hall. I lock that one too.
After setting the clothes on the counter, I stare at my reflection in the massive mirror. A stranger looks back at me. Pale face streaked with dirt and tears and a smattering of freckles. Light brown hair tangled and wild. Green eyes too big, too haunted. Body cloaked in borrowed clothes that hang off my frame like I’m a little girl playing dress-up.
My fingers fumble with the hem of his shirt, the one I’ve worn since the shooting. It smells like him. Everything smells like him. I need it off. Need every trace of him gone from my skin.
In a matter of seconds, I’ve stripped, letting the clothes fall to the floor in a heap. My body is a map of the last twenty-four hours. Small cuts and scrapes from the alley, my escape, and the gunfight. Faint bruises on my wrists from the zip ties.
Despite the luxury of the fixture, the shower controls are simple. I turn the water as hot as I can tolerate and step under the punishing spray. Steam billows around me, cocooning me in this temporary sanctuary. The heat sears my skin, pinkening it within seconds, but I welcome the discomfort.
It’s clean.
Honest. Uncomplicated.
Tilting my face into the spray, I let the water sluice away tears I didn’t realize were falling. I hug my body, holding myself together as tremors rack my frame. Here, hidden in steam and noise, I finally let myself break.
A raw, animalistic, primal sob rips from my throat.
Then another. And another. Until I’m crouched on the marble floor of the shower, arms wrapped around my knees, body convulsing with the force of my fear and grief and rage.
I cry for my apartment, the one safe space I had, now violated and destroyed. I cry for my job, gone because I witnessed something I shouldn’t have. I cry for Samantha, innocent and unaware that I’ve endangered her life. I cry for myself, the woman who woke up yesterday thinking her biggest problem was making rent and who’s currently cowering naked in a killer’s shower.
But most of all, I cry over my own body’s betrayal and the way heat flooded me when Alexei kissed me. My shameful yearning for more. What kind of person does that make me? What broken thing lives inside me that responds to danger, to violence, to power with desire rather than fear?
I scrub at my skin, nails leaving red trails down my arms, my legs, my stomach. As if I can banish the memory of his touch. Of my response. As if I can cleanse myself of whatever dark impulse has me wanting this terrifying, lethal man.
Eventually, the water cools, the hot water tank finally emptying after my thirty-minute breakdown. I force myself torise up on shaky legs and go through the motions of washing up using the expensive products on the built-in shelf. With my mind and body disconnected by fatigue and trauma, each movement requires concentration.
When I finally exit the shower, the bathroom is filled with steam, the mirror fogged beyond recognition. Good. I don’t want to see myself anymore. I can’t look into the eyes of a woman who’s hit rock bottom and then somehow found a way to sink even lower.
I dry off mechanically with a thick gray towel before pulling on the fresh clothes. I roll the waistband of the sweatpants several times so they don’t drag on the floor and tie the drawstring as tight as it will go.
Renewed exhaustion slams into me as I finish dressing. My limbs are weighted with lead, my eyelids too heavy to keep open. I should go back out there. Face him. Check on Pixie. Make some sort of plan for tomorrow.
But I can’t. There’s nothing left in me. No strength. No fight. No tears. Nothing but a bone-deep weariness.
I open the gray door, wander through the gray light, and shove back the gray blanket. My head sinks into a gray pillow as I pull gray sheets over my shoulder.
Life has never been black-and-white before. But it’s also never held so many shades of gray.
Chapter 21
Aurora
A soft object presses against my face, smothering me. I thrash against the weight, heart thundering as I claw my way up from the depths of unconsciousness. My hands connect with thick fabric that I shove away with a strangled gasp.
A pillow. Just a pillow.
Not hands. Not a gag. My lungs expand painfully as I gulp down air, the remnants of terror still coursing through my veins. Grandma’s necklace, pooled on the sheet next to me, reminds me of reality.
A startledmeowchimes near my ear as something warm and furry scampers across my chest.
Pixie. Her orange blur disappears over the edge of the bed.
She must have knocked the pillow over on me. Possibly on purpose so I’d get up and feed her. Wouldn’t be the first time.
After my breakdown last night, I slept like the dead.
I fling myself upright, tangled sheets anchoring my legs like restraints. I realize that, in all the chaos, I neglected to set out food, water, or a litter box after Pixie and I were reunited. Sniffing the air, I pray my cat didn’t decide to use the bed or my clothes when she had no other options.
