“Drawing you a bath.” He carried her through the bathroom door where steam still lingered from his shower, the marble tile warm beneath his bare feet. “Trust me, your muscles will appreciate it.”
“I appreciate your concern, but I’m perfectly fine.”
“Humor me.” He pressed his lips to her temple, and the tenderness of the gesture, so at odds with the man who had just driven into her with enough force to knock the headboard loose, dissolved her protest entirely.
He ran the water until the temperature satisfied his exacting standards, then lowered her into the deep porcelain tub. Daisy sighed as the heat enveloped her, sinking into muscles she hadn’t realized were clenched until they released.
He climbed in behind her, settling her back against his chest. His long legs bracketed hers.
They soaked for what felt like hours, the bathroom filling with jasmine-scented steam and the quiet murmur of conversation that wandered without destination. He washed her body with unhurried hands, lathering soap along her arms, her collarbones, the tender space between her legs.
Every time the water cooled, he reached for the tap and added more, adjusting the temperature with the same meticulous attention he applied to everything else.
Afterward, she dressed, unsure if he wanted her to stay or if she should find her purse and start making her way home.
She awkwardly stood at the vanity in her jeans and t-shirt, running a borrowed comb through damp hair, dragging out each tangle as much as she was dragging out the time. The shadows beneath her eyes had softened and that pinched tension she’d carried in her jaw for weeks had finally disappeared.
Jack appeared behind her, meeting her gaze in the mirror. Dark jeans sat low on his hips, and a black dress shirt hung open at the collar, exposing the hollow of his throat and the first inches of scarred chest beneath. His grey eyes held hers as he stepped behind her, not stopping until his body touched hers.
Her pulse quickened for reasons she couldn’t blame on proximity alone. She set down the comb, afraid that this was the start of an unwanted goodbye.
“I have something for you.” His warmth radiated through the thin cotton of her t-shirt.
“Something for me?”
“I should have sent it to you weeks ago, but…” His voice trailed off.
“What is it?” She couldn’t imagine what else he could possibly give her.
His hands rose slowly, passing over her head, and a delicate gold chain caught the light. Her breath seized in her throat as tears sprang to her eyes.
“My locket!”
“It was returned to me the night of the Feast.” His voice was quiet, almost reverent, as though he understood the gravity of what he held between his fingers.
He gathered her damp hair with one hand, lifting the weight of it from her neck with utter care. His knuckles grazed the nape of her neck as he draped the chain against her skin, and the cool kiss of gold settling into the familiar hollow of her collarbone flooded her with a sense of homecoming.
He worked the tiny clasp with patience that contradicted the size of his hands. His breath teased her skin, awakening her body once more. When the closure caught, he smoothed her hair, his palms trailing the length of it with a gentleness so deliberate it made her heart clench.
His hands lingered on her shoulders.
Daisy lifted the locket from her chest and pressed the tiny clasp with her thumbnail. The oval face opened and her mother smiled up at her, unchanged, undamaged, that familiar sepia warmth radiating from the photograph as though Pamela Burdan herself had been waiting patiently to be found.
She closed the locket and wrapped her fingers around it, pressing the warm metal into her palm. “Thank you.” The words were wholly inadequate for what he had returned to her.
She turned in his arms and kissed him, softly, her free hand resting against his open collar where his pulse beat steady and strong beneath her fingertips.
Her lips parted from his in reluctant increments, and the quiet that settled between them carried a different texture than the charged silence of the bedroom.
Softer. More uncertain.
The kind of stillness that preceded questions a person wasn’t sure they had the right to ask.
His face was so close she could count the faint lines at the corners of his eyes, the places where years of guarded expression had carved themselves into his skin.
He’d given her back a piece of her past, and that made her think of how little she knew about his. Six years old. Eight years of suffering before he escaped whatever monster tortured him. The mathematics of his pain were staggering, and the more she considered them, the more one detail snagged like a thorn in her mind.
“Jack, was R.A. a relative?” The people closest to children were often the ones who did the most damage.
