Chapter
Three
BONES
Grace was shaking so hard I could feel the tremors through my arm, even with her barely leaning on me. Light contact. Bare minimum pressure. She was trying not to touch me more than she had to.
That wasn’t going to work.
The guest room was clear. I swept it myself before I let her in. AB and Voodoo had the rest of the house. Her assailant was unconscious and zip-tied to a radiator in the office. Nothing was getting to her.
I walked her into the adjoining bathroom—clean tile, soft lighting, nothing sharp in sight. Neutral ground. A place that wouldn’t trigger anything unless she projected it there herself.
Her breath started to hitch the second she caught sight of herself in the mirror. She froze. Went rigid. Like she expected the glass to judge her.
“Don’t look at that,” I said quietly.
She flinched at the sound of my voice. Not from fear—startle response. Too much adrenaline, too much shock running through a body running on fumes.
Her fingers clenched harder in my shirt. She tried to pull back. “Bones… I—I don’t want you to see me like this.”
I angled my body between her and the mirror. “Grace.”
Just her name. Low. Solid. Something she could push against if she needed to.
She wouldn’t meet my eyes. Her gaze was fixed somewhere around my collarbone, unfocused.
“I pissed myself,” she whispered. “I threw up on myself. I’m—” Her breath cracked. “I’m disgusting.”
Deep breath. I wrapped iron control around my responses. Grace didn’t need my rage. Not yet. We’d get there, but she needed something far different. Maybe Voodoo might have been the better choice to look after her. But I wanted to take care of her right now.
Pain and shame were two very different responses. The first was just information. You could ignore it, override it, or just compartmentalize it under something survivable. The second? It just didn’t work that way. Shame rewired the whole system if you let it.
“Grace,” I murmured again, slower this time, “none of that matters.”
Her breath came fast and shallow. “To you.”
“To me,” I said, “especially to me.”
That got her attention. Her eyes flicked up—quick, uncertain.
She didn’t pull away this time when I reached out and brushed my fingers along her forearm. Barely a touch. Just enough to remind her she was here, in the present, not back in that warehouse. Not in that room.
“Sit,” I said, guiding her toward the closed toilet lid. Soft voice. Command underneath it. She listened more to tone than words right now.
She sat, elbows on her knees, fingers locked tight. The shaking hadn’t stopped. Her whole body looked like it was trying to outrun the memory of the last hour.
I grabbed a clean towel from the cabinet, ran warm water over one corner. Routine movement. Predictable. Safe. I wrung out the excess.
When I knelt in front of her, her eyes widened. “Bones, you don’t have to?—”
“I know what I have to do.” I met her gaze. “And what I’m choosing to do.”
Color rose on her neck. Embarrassment. Vulnerability. And something underneath all that—something she didn’t have a name for yet.
Her voice was barely audible. “I don’t want to get anything on you.”
“Grace.” The word came out softer than I intended. “Nothingon you scares me.”
