THIRTY-SIX
Sophia
Colt drops us off outside of Eric’s apartment building after driving us through somewhere to grab some fast food. I hold onto the bags, keeping them away from the blood caked onto Eric’s hands. Every time that I look at him, I see him in that cell, and I feel like I’m going to be sick. I think about him spending hours alone locked in acage.
Again.
He’s been quiet since we left the police station, and I’m not sure if it’s because he’s tired – lord knows that I would be – or if it’s because being locked in there brought up painful memories that he’s trapped in again. I don’t pry, I don’t ask. I just follow him up to his penthouse and into the apartment, kicking off my shoes at the door with him, and I set the bags of food down onto his kitchen island.
“You need to wash your—”
“I thought you were gonna smack the shit out of Alec in there.” he says, separating the buttons at the top of his shirt. “You know all the juicy details, huh?”
I hesitate. He didn’t want me to know, I don’t think.
My mind flashes to that article. To the horrible things written inside. To the little boy that I saw locked in that cage tonight, starving and scared and alone.
I shouldn’t have looked it up. I should have kept my nose out of his business.
But I needed to know.
“Yeah,” I admit with a nod, “I know. That’s why I was late to that party. I found an old article, and…I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have dug it up, it was a total violation of your—”
“Nothin’ makes you run, does it?”
“And nothing breaks you.”
“That’s not true.” A soft smile crosses his features, crinkling up the corners of his eyes. It looks so out of place, with the blood splattered across his cheeks. Something sobeautiful and gentle sitting below something born of so much violence. “You did.”
His hands cup my face, and I don’t even notice the blood anymore as his lips meet mine. I swallow the taste of him, bringing my own hands to his face while I deepen our kiss. We both forget about our dinner waiting on the counter while we move toward his bedroom, effortlessly gliding through into the attached bathroom.
A strange quiet hangs between us while I reach into the shower and turn on the water flow; it’s not an uncomfortable silence, and it’s far from empty. So many unsaid words hang in the air between us that they’re palpable. Eric strips his clothing away, and I do the same, each of us staring at the other while we work, until we step into the water together.
While he works to scrub his hands clean, I reach for a wash cloth, squeezing some of the cleanser that I left here onto it, and I gently work it into the skin on his face, wiping away Leonard’s dried blood. I gently scrub the cloth along his body, letting the soap and water rinse away any remnants that may have seeped through his shirt while he wore it, and I circle around him until I reach his back.
My breath catches in my throat as I stare at a pair of eyes tattooed between his broad shoulder blades.
Myeyes.
The detail work, the eyebrows, the shape of the eyes themselves, all of it is black and gray; but the irises are in beautiful, vivid color.
My hand traces over the recently-healed tattoo, soaking in the beauty of it and everything that it means. Our tattoos in Cancun were one thing. A kiss left on a napkin, a few colorful flowers on a hat. They were silly and wild and acted as a souvenir. But this? He’s mademea part of him. He’s stampedmeinto his very skin.
“Eric…”
I’m not sure if he can hear my voice break as I say his name, and when he turns to face me, I’m not sure if he can seethe tears falling from my eyes under the rushing water raining down from above us.
But when he bends down and presses his forehead to mine, I think the world stops for a minute, coming to a screeching halt as he hooks his finger beneath my chin and tells me, “I love you.”
There’s no veil between us; no simulated sleep, no whispered confessions into my hair. The words are hanging between us, real, alive, and clawing its way into my bones.
Eric Alexander Davis is my soulmate; of this, I am certain.
I drape my arms over the back of his neck, standing on my toes to press a kiss to his lips, fusing our mouths together. I can feel the tension in his body release, the same tension that I’ve felt build up every night that we’ve spent together since the first time that he whispered his feelings to me.
I’m not even sure how much time passes in that shower, kissing and holding and touching each other. It’s the most intimate thing that I’ve ever experienced in my life, and we don’t even have sex. We don’t speak. We just mold together until the water runs cold.
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