My pulse stutters. I stare at the door. My reflection wavers in the mirror—eyes red, hazel dulled, cheeks streaked wet. I don’t look like myself.
I don’t want him to see me like this.
Broken. Filthy.
But some traitorous part of me still aches for the door to open.
The knob turns.
The mirror catches him first; broad shoulders filling the frame, black shirt stretched tight across muscle. The cotton clings, tracing every line, every ridge of him. Veins run thick over his forearms, up the side of his neck, cutting against the ink scrawled there like some brutal signature.
The shirt’s streaked dark in places—blood, dried into the fabric like a warning. Not his. Evan’s.
My chest tightens, breath caught somewhere high and useless. Because even now—shaking, raw, filthy—I feel it. The heat that rolls off him. The way danger looks carved into his body, and somehow, that makes him sexier. Deadlier. Like he walked straight out of a war and brought it into my bathroom with him.
My eyes trace him before I can stop, drinking in everything I shouldn’t. Then his gaze finds mine in the glass. Steady. Unreadable. Mine are red, swollen, a stranger’s.
I wait for him to say something. Anything.
He doesn’t speak. Just stands there, broad shoulders eating up the mirror, his gaze locked on me.
I fold my arms tighter, ribs aching with the pressure, wishing I could vanish into the tile. I’m painfully aware of my puffy eyes, wet cheeks, hair stuck to my temples. Like someone ruined.
I wait for it: the questions, the anger.Why would you go back there? Why risk it?The excuses choke my throat before he even opens his mouth.
But he never does. Only his gaze travels down. My wrists, raw red from Evan’s grip. My throat blotched from scrubbing. The blouse, wrinkled, stained where Evan’s hands shoved.
The heat of it pins me in place. Not pity. Not disgust. Something heavier. Like he’s making a ledger of every mark on me and already planning the debt collection.
I grip myself harder, shaking, bracing for judgment that never comes. Just the weight of him behind me, silent, immovable, and too close to breathe around.
The silence stretches. I almost wish he’d yell. At least then I’d know what to do with my hands, my lungs, my skin that still feels like it belongs to someone else.
But he doesn’t.
Instead, he moves like he’s dismantling a bomb. Slow. Deliberate.
He takes a towel off the rack and dampens it under the sink. His movements are precise and controlled. Like every muscle is leashed.
“Turn around.”
His voice lands low, gravel and smoke, the kind that doesn’t need volume to make you obey.
I move before I can think better of it, pivoting slowly, my arms still locked tight around myself. He fills the space.
His scent hits first.
Soap. Metal. Gun oil.
He smells like heat and aftermath, and it hits somewhere low in my gut that I thought was dead. Especially after what just happened.
What the hell is wrong with me?
He doesn’t step back. Doesn’t give me space to think. His gaze holds steady, carved from whatever God uses when He makes men who don’t break. I feel it more than I see it. Like the pressure of fingers against skin, searching for the softest part.
My mouth opens. No words come. Just the taste of copper and soap and something sharp in the air that might be him.
His hand rises.
