I scoop her up and stand with her in my arms. She doesn’t protest, just curls against me like she’s trying to burrow inside my ribcage. The shower is just down the hall. I manage to turn the water on one-handed, keeping her tucked close.
Steam fills the tiny bathroom. I set her down gently on the closed toilet lid and peel off my ruined shirt. The blood—his, not mine—has dried into stiff patches across the fabric. I drop it on the floor and kick it into the corner where I don’t have to look at it.
When I kneel in front of her to remove her shoes, she finally speaks. “I can do it myself.”
“I know.” I unlace her sneakers anyway, sliding them off along with her socks. “But let me.”
To my surprise, she doesn’t argue. Only watches me with those wide hazel eyes while I strip away the last of her clothes—her sweatshirt, her sports bra. The bandages on her palms are coming loose, edges curling and damp with sweat. I peel them off carefully and examine the scrapes underneath.
They’re healing. They’ll scar, maybe, but they’ll heal.
Unlike some things.
I shed my jeans and boxer briefs, then help her to her feet and guide her into the shower. The water hits us both, hot enough to sting. Eliana tilts her face up into the spray and closes her eyes. Red marks bloom across her ass where the spatula landed.
Idid that. Marked her. Claimed her.
Mine.
I grab her strawberry shampoo from the shelf and squeeze some into my palm. “Turn around.”
She obeys without question, and that trust, that absolute, unthinking fuckingtrust, makes me cringe. I work the shampoo through her copper curls, massaging her scalp with my fingertips. She makes a small sound of contentment and leans back against me.
I rinse the shampoo from her hair, watching the suds swirl down the drain. My hands move on autopilot. Conditioner next, working it through the ends of her curls. She sways, exhausted, and I steady her with a hand on her hip.
“Sit down,” I say. “Before you fall down.”
We sink to the shower floor together. The water beats down on us from above. Steam blurs the hard outlines of things, turning the world melted and hazy. I pull her back against my chest. She fits there perfectly, like she was made for this exact spot.
Her breathing is already slowing, evening out. The adrenaline crash is hitting her hard.
“Bastian?” I can barely hear her over the spray.
“Mm?”
“What happens now?”
I don’t have an answer. Not one that won’t scare the living fuck out of us both. So instead, I press my lips to her temple and start to sing.
It’s an old Russian lullaby.Spi, mladenets moy prekrasny.Sleep, my beautiful baby.Mama used to sing it to me when I wassmall, back before the vodka and the drugs and the merciless men ruined her voice. Aleksei sang it to me later, after she stopped. When I was scared or sick or just needed someone to remind me I wasn’t completely alone in the world, he’d sing.
And then I sang it to Sage. Every night for the first few years after Mama died and he came to live with me, when he’d wake up screaming from nightmares he was too young to understand, I’d rock him in my arms and sing until his sobs quieted and his tiny fists unclenched.
The words come back easier than I expect. My voice is awful, but Eliana relaxes against me anyway. Her head lolls against my shoulder.
Bayushki-bayu. Bayushki-bayu.
Hush now. Hush now.
I don’t know all the verses anymore. Some of them are lost to time and trauma, and others to sixteen years of deliberate attempts to forget. But I know enough. The melody, at least. The rhythm that says,You’re safe, you’re loved, you’re not alone.
Her breathing deepens. Her body goes heavy and pliant in my arms.
She’s asleep.
I keep singing anyway, even after the water starts to run cold. Because maybe I’m not singing for her. Notjustfor her, at least.
I’m also singing for the twelve-year-old boy who watched his brother choose darkness so he wouldn’t have to. For the young man who held an abandoned newborn and promised to keep him safe, then failed spectacularly. For every version of myself that’s ever been too scared to let someone in.
