I turn the shower on. The pipes groan and then settle, water streaming hot and steady. I strip without thinking, walking straight under the heat, letting it hit my shoulders first. As always, the scars along my right side tighten before they relax.
Steam fills the air quickly.
The burn of the water isn’t enough to clear my head. I close my eyes and see her.
Roxanne, her back arched off my desk, lips parted, fingers tight on my shirt like she was pulling me closer and pushing me away at the same time. The sound she made when I pressed my mouth to hers. The look in her eyes afterward—furious, breathless, wanting, afraid.
I brace one hand on the tile.
I shouldn’t be doing this. I shouldn’t be thinking about her.
But stopping feels impossible.
My hand moves down, slowly at first, then tighter when the image of her moaning on top of me sharpens. I envision her legs spreading to take me better, her thick thighs like warm dough under my greedy hands. I have a chokehold on the base of my cock, not wanting to let go. Not yet.
I imagine her again. Against the door. Against the wall. In this shower. Scenarios that haven’t happened yet, but that Iwant.Warm water rushing over her dark hair, her hands on my chest, her mouth yielding under mine.
Each stroke sends a shudder through me. It’s sharp enough to force a groan from my throat. I’m close already. She does this to me. Two more strokes, the swipe of my thumb over the tip already tight and pulsing?—
When it’s over, I lean my forehead against the tile and let the water wash everything away: the heat, the tension, the frustration. It doesn’t wash away the truth.
I turn the water off, grab a towel, and step out into the humid air of the bathroom. My phone buzzes on the counter. I almost ignore it, assuming it’s Jesse again.
It isn’t.
Roxanne:Thank you for finding a permanent sitter for Andrea.
The message is short but warm at the edges, as if she didn’t mean to reveal she was relieved, grateful, or thinking about me at all.
I stare at the text for a long moment, towel forgotten in my hand.
It’s ridiculous how something so small can cut through the entire day. It cut through the ruined weapon stash, the enemy tracks, the hours of irritation and exhaustion and settled in my chest like a quiet weight.
She let me help.
She let me do something for our daughter.
My pulse softens, an easing low in my chest, one I don’t let myself feel for anyone. And yet here it is.
A father. I’m a father.
The towel slips from my fingers onto the floor.
I pick up the phone, let out one long breath, and sit on the edge of the bed, looking out at the brilliant, infuriatingly beautiful sunset over the forest. Oranges, pinks, pale blues. The kind of sky Andrea would love. Somewhere nearby is a river that leads right to her.
This is the kind of sky she might someday see from the helicopter.
If Roxy lets me, if she trusts me.Let me help,I beg, not willing to type the words out.
I don’t respond right away. I hold the phone, watching the message glow on the screen, feeling something shift, subtle and deep.
For the first time all day, the anger fades. The danger, the threat remain—sharp as the ruined crates in Jesse’s photos. But the storm inside me softens just enough to breathe.
Just enough to hope.
Just enough to realize that even with enemy boots in my forests and fire on my land, the thing terrifying me most isn’t the threat outside.
It’s the one inside—the fear that I might never earn a place in my daughter’s life.
