His jaw tightens. Not in irritation. In decision.
“Sit on the counter,” he says, steady and sure.
I obey, hauling myself up carefully, gripping the edge of the counter as he approaches. His presence is grounding in a way I can’t explain. He scoops cream onto his fingers, the faint scent of mint rising between us as he steps close enough for our knees to touch. With slow deliberation, he lifts my shirt. His fingers hover just above my skin, waiting for permission my voice can’t seem to give. I just nod once.
His touch finally comes, a gliding, featherlight stroke over raw flesh, and every nerve in my body reacts at once. My breath stutters, my gaze locked on his face. He focuses on the wound as though anything less would be disrespectful. His lashes lower, shadows cutting across his cheekbones. It’s domestic and intimate and terrifying all at once, this small act of care from a man who keeps himself wrapped in walls thicker than stone.
“Say something,” I whisper, head tipping back against the mirror. “Anything.”
He exhales as though he’s been trying to decide betweentoo many truths.
“Thank you,” he murmurs. “For helping me. Even when you didn’t want to.”
“I did want to,” I say, my hand finding his arm without thinking. His skin is warm under my palm. “You were dying.”
“That doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt you,” he says softly. “I’m…sorry for that.”
His fingers keep working the ointment into my torn skin, slower this time, almost reverent. He touches me like he’s memorizing where each wound lives, like he’s cataloging their pain as his own. The rise and fall of his chest steadies me more than my own breath does.
Something shifts in me. Something undeniable.
The way he stands between my knees. The way he’s looking at my skin as though it’s familiar territory. The way his scars mirror mine. Everything about him pulls at me, a tether I can feel beneath my ribs, tightening with every quiet second.
A pulse of pain explodes behind my eyes. I grab my head immediately, squeezing my eyes shut. The headache pulses hard, trying to stop whatever thought had started to bloom.
Ares goes still.
“Stop looking at me differently,” he says, voice barely above a breath. “Your block won’t let you, so don’t try.”
“I’m not-”
“You are,” he says, and there’s no accusation in it. Only resignation. His hands stay under my shirt, unmoving now, palms warm against my skin. “That photo wasn’t supposed to touch you. Not yet. Althea shouldn’t have shown it to you. Every time you push against the block, it pushes back harder.”
His thumbs stroke gently, up, down, up, as if soothing both my wounds and whatever invisible bruise exists in my mind. I watch him in the mirror behind me: the curve of hisshoulders, the tension in his jaw, the way his throat works when he swallows.
He looks like a man holding back a hundred truths.
And my body trembles with the sense that each of them belongs to me.
I grip the edge of the counter, grounding myself as I look at him, really look at him, his face carved in an expression that holds both longing and grief.
“In the photo,” I murmur, searching his eyes for something solid to anchor myself to. He meets my gaze with a sadness so heavy it threatens to pull me under. “Where was Sebastian? If he’s always known us, why wasn’t he in it?”
At the mention of Sebastian, Ares’s hands still. The tendons in his forearms tighten almost imperceptibly, but I feel the shift as if the air itself tenses around him.
“I’m still navigating which memories are mine and which ones aren’t,” he says quietly. It’s not an answer, not really, but it’s all he can give. And somehow the uncertainty in his voice feels truer than any certainty could have.
“He was in the manor,” I whisper. A flicker of something, frustration, resignation, maybe even jealousy, crosses Ares’s face before he shakes his head with a small, defeated motion.
“So was I,” he says. The simple statement sends a shock through my skull, a bright spike of pain ripping through whatever mental wall has been barricading my memories. I gasp at the sudden pressure, gripping the counter harder as the remnants of some half-forgotten memory slip through my fingers like water.
Ares reacts instantly. He withdraws from my wound but closes the space between us, both hands rising to cradle my face. His palms are warm, steady, trying to soothe a storm he can’t control. His thumbs sweep along my cheeks in slow, comforting strokes, his breath shallow, his eyes searching meas if he’s desperate for me to recognize something, anything, about him.
Everything in me responds to the touch. My body leans, gravitates toward him like instinct. But it’s as if invisible chains tighten around my ribs, holding me back from the impulse to close the remaining distance between us. Something inside of me trembles at the edges, fighting to surface through whatever block is strangling my memories.
“We need to get some sleep,” he murmurs, though exhaustion is only half the reason behind the retreat. He lets his hands slip away, his warmth disappearing from my skin too abruptly, leaving me cold in the space he no longer occupies.
He turns toward the door, reaching for the knob, but stops. His shoulders rise with a sharp breath before falling again, as if he’s bracing himself against his own words.
