“I know.” Tom’s voice was soft. Regretful. He moved to my other wrist, repeating the process with the same careful attention. “I know. I’m sorry.”
He said it like that word meant anything. Like it could undo any of this.
But I didn’t want to think about that anymore.
There were much nicer things I could be focusing on. The massage of his fingers working the cream into my skin felt unbelievably good, and I made another embarrassing sound, caught somewhere between a sigh and a hum of pleasure.
When he finished with my wrists, he didn’t let go of my hands. He continued to hold them, his thumbs rubbing gentle circles over my knuckles.
The moment became charged with something I didn’t want to name, my skin prickling with awareness despite the drugs dulling my senses.
“Shay,” Tom said, and his voice was low.
I made the mistake of looking up at him.
His eyes were dark, intense, fixed on my face like I was the only thing in the world that mattered.
And god help me, something in my chest responded. Some stupid, traitorous part of me that still remembered how it feltto be looked at like that. To be wanted like that.
He leaned in slowly, giving me time to pull away. To say no. To turn my head or push him back or do anything but sit there and let it happen.
I didn’t move, my body unwilling to obey the commands my brain was screaming at it.
His lips brushed mine—soft and tentative, asking a question I couldn’t answer. It would be so easy to give in. To let the drug smooth over all the sharp edges and just… feel. To pretend for a moment that nothing else mattered. That we were just Tom and Shay, two people who loved each other.
The kiss deepened slightly, and I felt his hand come up to cup my face, his palm warm against my cheek. His thumb stroked my cheekbone with heartbreaking tenderness, and the gentleness of it made something crack inside me.
I turned my head away, breaking the contact.
“Don’t,” I whispered, my voice cracking. “Please don’t.”
Tom pulled back immediately, his hand falling away from my face like I’d burned him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”
“No. You shouldn’t have.” I wrapped my arms around myself, suddenly cold despite the warm robe. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to touch me like that. Like we’re… like this is…”
I couldn’t finish the sentence. I didn’t know how to articulate the wrongness of it.
The moment shattered, and reality came rushing back—muted by the drugs but still there. The basement waiting below. The chains. The concrete. The truth of what he’d done and what I’d become.
“You should rest,” Tom said, his voice carefully neutral. “The medication will wear off in a few hours.”
He stood and pulled back the covers of the bed. The sheetsunderneath looked impossibly inviting, soft and comfortable in a way I’d almost forgotten existed.
“I’ll take you back downstairs when you wake up,” he said. “I promise.”
I lay down, the mattress conforming to my body like an embrace; it felt like coming home. The pillow was soft against my cheek, cradling my head. The sheets smelled like him, and I had to force myself not to inhale.
Tom pulled the blankets over me, tucking them around my shoulders with the same care he’d used for everything else.
“Sleep,” he said softly, his hand smoothing my hair back from my forehead.
I let myself drift. The drug, the warmth, the exhaustion of days without proper rest—all of it pulled me down into darkness like an undertow.
The last thing I felt was his hand in my hair, stroking in long, soothing motions.
Sleep took me under, and I dreamed of moths flying into flames, of drowning in warm water, of love and violence so tangled together that I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began.
16
