The hot water burns, and I let it. The shampoo smells fancy and feminine. I don’t care.
Working on the blood in my nail beds, I hear the snick of the door behind me, and I worry that Clara just gave herself away by letting herself in. But she came in. She followed me. She doesn’t know what I just did.
Hopping up on the counter, her legs crossed, she doesn’t join me. And I don’t know if it’s to keep our cover, or if she’s scared of me.
She should be. I am.
“How was tonight?” she asks, her voice scratchy from talking about nonsense for the last two days with people more politely toxic than carbon monoxide.
“Bloody.”
“Meaning?”
“Terminal.”
The long sigh she makes could be interpreted in any number of ways. Which is probably why she chose that reaction.
I turn away from her, standing with my face in the stream, wishing I could drown myself in the shower. Damn fucking impossible, but it would be a neat solution. A flash out of the corner of my eye has me flicking off the water, staring at Clara through the shower wall, her back directly under the camera, a thin pink slip and a panel of clear glass the only things between us.
I’m sorry,she mouths, grief so heavy that I’m not sure I can bear it.
I step to the door of the shower, pushing it open and blindly reaching for a towel, wishing I felt something, anything, as her eyes drop for a moment, taking me in.
We’ve been here before, only reversed. She beat me in a test, and I saw her in all her naked glory. I rubbed one out to the memory for almost a year.
Only this time, I’m the one who’s naked. I just killed a man, and instead of her righteous anger, I get her big, sad eyes and silence, followed by her subtly checking me out. The absurdity of the situation has a chuckle escaping from me. It’s followed by a gallows laugh, Clara’s eyes growing large as I lose it, naked and dripping on the bathroom floor.
This shit’s fucked. So fucking fucked. And it’s either laugh or throw myself out the window. I guess I’m laughing.
Chapter 56
Clara
Trips doesn’t laugh. Not like this, at least. And while half of me is panicking, the other half cracks in two.
He just killed someone, and that’s what it takes for him to feel free to laugh.
He’s a protector through and through. And his father insists on twisting that, on turning his need to keep the people he loves safe into a weapon, one that he can point at whoever he pleases.
And I’m the goddamn trigger he pulled to set the weapon off.
My arms are around his waist, the water trickling down his body soaking into my slip, as I squeeze him. Tight, like I’m holding all the pieces of Trips that I love inside of him. And even if that thought terrifies me, I do it anyway.
His laughter shakes us both, his hands running through his wet hair, sprinkling droplets over me, his muscles clenched tight under my grasp.
The back of my mind notes that this just makes me a better trigger for his father, that showing this level of care, of intimacy, will come back to fuck us.
But this is more important than my damn plan.He’smore important. So I hold tight as the chuckles morph into a single sob.
Then he’s stone in my arms, the risk of tears too much for him. The risk of feeling anything is too much in this godforsaken place. Only anger, violence, and apathy are acceptable for a Westerhouse. Tilting my chin up, I try to read him, to figure out what he needs from me, how to go about processing the fact that he’s a killer. Because I sure as shit have never done that before.
And based on his reaction, he hasn’t either.
He’s staring at the ceiling, at the camera, a terrifying blankness in his eyes. “Trips?” I whisper.
Blinking, his chest fills against me, then his breath whooshes out.
His hands come and bracket my face, bending me back farther than is comfortable, farther than is necessary to see me. My heart rate picks up, some base part of me reacting to the implicit danger.
