Yet still, I’m leaning into it because being touched like this... so deliberately, with so much intimate intention, without the expectation of sexy words or performance…
I don’t think I’ve ever been touched like this.
It’s as if she’s cleansing the stains on my soul, massaging the knots tangling my mind. Her touch is entrancing, medicating even.
I didn’t know touch could feel like this.
“Tell me if you want me to stop,” she says softly. “I don’t want to hurt you. And I don’t want you to force yourself through this. If it gets to be too much—”
“Please don’t stop,” I whisper.
And for another few minutes, she doesn’t. She takes her time bending and scrubbing my legs, being careful with the back ofmy thigh where I now have stitches, and when she stands again, her arms snaking around my waist so she can squeeze the soap over my stomach, I swallow.
“They don’t get to take this away from you,” she whispers in my ear. “They don’t get to take away true touch or intimacy when you want it, from someone who truly cares about you. Because when it’s right…” She sinks her forehead onto my wet hair and pulls my body flush.
“When it’s right, it’s worth it.”
I swallow and brace my hands against her arms as she wraps them fully around me, eyes staying closed for fear that if I open them, these last few minutes would have been a dream.
Fuck, this feels good.Secure. Almost familiar.
For the first time in years, I’m at peace.
I twist in her arms, and she doesn’t release me. I’m held by her stare, the glassiness coating her eyes. I reach up and swipe a stray droplet of water from her face, and more than anything, I want to tell her I’ll be okay.
Though, I don’t know if that’s the truth.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
GEMMA
Every timeI see another tear drift from Bonnie’s eyes, it takes a little bit of my heart with it when it dries on her skin. She’s exhausted—the sun is coming up, for fuck’s sake. I brushed her hair again and dried it, and before I could get her into clothes, she fell asleep sitting up on the bed. I only knew when I went to get up to get her clothes, and she shifted back onto the mattress before I could move.
More than once, I had to catch myself from breaking down with her in the shower.
More than once, I had to sniff back my tears and remind myself that I was not the one who was attacked. I was not the one who had to live with that memory and trauma.
I was just the person cleaning it off of her—
For the second time.
At least this time she could tell me if something hurt, she could tell me if she wanted the hospital, the police, or anyone else. She wasn’t unconscious and covered in blood, semen, and vomit. She wasn’t a rag doll. I didn’t have to keep checking her pulse to make sure she was stillbreathing.
I sink onto the steps outside her trailer and hang my head, trying like hell to continue holding it in, to be strong and remain neutral in case someone were to come by.
However, as the dewy morning air envelops my skin, I break.
How did I let this happen to her again?
Behind my eyes, all I can see is the last time I was in this situation with her, the last time I had to wash someone else’s grime out of her hair and off her body.
The last time she grabbed me by the wrist and asked me to stay after an incident that broke her.
I can still see her lying in the bed that dreary November 1stas I stand beside it, my mask still on. I stood by that bed when she woke up the next morning, and I couldn’t hold her. I couldn’t hold her because I didn’t want to scare her.
I couldn’t save her then.
Just like I couldn’t save her last night.
