But, to my surprise, he lifted me into his arms, cradling me against his chest, which was covered in silver hair.
“I’m going to need to keep you with me. Sorry, sugar.”
I wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for, but I was too tired to not lay my head down on his shoulder as he carried me to the door. I let my fingers curl into his chest, nesting in the silver hairs there. They were softer than I expected. Like him.
My heart was hammering so hard, I thought it might burst from my chest. I hadn’t felt my own heartbeat in months—I’d been dead inside. Yet now it was practically screaming at me. But in some foreign language I couldn’t understand.
Close your eyes, sugar," he said softly as we neared the open door. "I don't want you to see this."
He didn't say what "this" was, but I easily guessed. Dennis's body.
I obediently closed my eyes, and by the time I opened them again, he was setting me on the toilet.
"Give me a sec," he said before reaching for the yellow towel hanging on the door hook and wrapping it around his waist.
I should have been thinking about what he'd just carried me past. About the fact that Dennis was dead in my living room. But my brain refused to go there, latching instead onto his broad chest in front of me, carved with muscle. The defined abs disappearing into the towel.
How often did this guy weight train? Was he some kind of senior Mr. Olympia?
"Glad you have a tub," he said, interrupting the thoughts I had no business having. "Was worried you wouldn't. Apartments nowadays are cardboard boxes. Don't even offer the basics."
He was right about that.
I could have gotten a slightly larger shower-only apartment in a nicer neighborhood for the same amount of rent I paid here, but the location within walking distance of my new job at the Black Heritage Museum and the bathtub were what had sold me on it.
He hunkered in front of the cabinet in a deep squat that I figured would have been hard on his knees. But he appeared to have no problem rooting through my cabinet until he found the bubble bath and the Epsom salts I kept there.
Then he rose again without having to hold on to anything and pulled the tab on the spout.
I watched the bathtub fill up with water and bubbles as he poured what had to be half the bag of salt into the tub.
“We can order you some more,” he said, as if hearing my thoughts about that amount of salt being wasteful. “I’ll put it on the list.”
What list?I wished I was capable of doing more than staring at him.
He turned to me with another soft look that didn’t match his outside. “I’m going to help you out of these clothes. But I promise, I’m not going to touch you for any other reason. Not until you’re ready. Can you raise your arms for me?”
Not until I’m ready for what?I had no idea what he meant by that.
But I raised my arms.
He got me out of my clothes with quick, efficient movements. Like a nurse.
I braced myself for judgement when he saw my not-nearly-as-toned body, but his eyes didn’t linger.
He just hefted me into the bath, and the next thing I knew, I was hidden beneath the bubbles. I reached up, then winced.
Somehow, he knew what I’d been trying to do. “You want me to put up your hair so it doesn’t get wet?”
It sounded like a question, but his big hands were in my hair before I could nod, taking down the tight ponytail and swirling my dreadlocks around the nylon band to put them up in a messy and much looser knot on top of my head.
“Went through a man bun stage back in the early 2000s, when my hair was still blond,” he admitted in a gruff confessional tone. “Glad I remember how to do this.”
A weird urge to laugh almost made it all the way up my throat before it died, joining all my other emotions in the graveyard inside my chest.
“I’m going to go get you a compress for your face, but if you need anything before I get back, just holler—or bang on the wall. I got great hearing. I’ll come right back, whichever one.”
I just looked at him.
