Instead: “Yes.” My voice cracks on it.
Anton’s jaw tightens, muscle twitching once. His thumb brushes over the welt, and the breath catches in my lungs.
The silence is louder than shouting. Louder than the faucet still running.
He lifts the towel, presses it against my cheek. The cloth is cool, soothing, where my skin feels raw. His hand follows the line of my jaw, tilting my face up until I’m forced to look at him.
And fuck—his eyes. His eyes are merciless. Not angry with me. Just lit with something darker, hungrier. Something that says “mine” in a language I shouldn’t want to understand.
“I-I’m sorry…” My voice is a whisper. A warning. A plea. I don’t even know which.
Anton’s eyes don’t flinch. They’re carved from shadow.
“Sorry for what?” His voice is a low growl, all heat and edges, like he’s whispering secrets against my skin, and my whole body listens.
He drops the towel to the side, then reaches past me to shut off the faucet. The move drags his whole body closer—broad chest crowding my space, hips brushing forward, nudging my knees apart without asking.
Oh, my God.
He’s so close, so big, and so hot against me, and I can’t breathe around it. His body’s a furnace. Hard, unyielding, muscle taut under that blood-streaked shirt, pressing into my thighs like he’s carved from iron and meant to burn.
My thighs shake, caught in the cage of him, and a spark skitters down my spine, too hot, too fast. His jeans grind against me, and a slick pulse awakens low, my body answering him in ways I can’t control, soaking through my jeans. The shame of it makes my face burn hotter than the water I scrubbed with.
“For…” I swallow, throat tight, words sticking like they’re afraid to come out. “For going back. For Evan. For dragging you into—” My voice cracks again, small and jagged, and I hate it, hate how it sounds like theoldMary, the one who apologized for taking up space.
“For needing you tosaveme… again.”
His jaw tightens, a muscle twitching once, like a wire pulled too taut.
“You didn’t drag me.” His words are slow, deliberate, each one landing like a stone in my chest. “You think I’d be here if I didn’t want to be?”
He lifts his hand, fingers sliding from my jaw to the back of my neck, thumb brushing the pulse that’s betraying me, racing under his touch. Not soft; controlled. Mapping every bruise, every mark Evan left, and burning them away with his own. Because for the first time in years, Evan’s words don’t feel like the truth.
Not with Anton looking at me like this.
The words scrape up my throat anyway, the ones I always reach for. The only ones I know.Sorry.
Sorry for being stupid.
Sorry for being weak.
Sorry for thinking I could ever be more than ordinary.
Sorry for being Mary—too small, too quiet, too nothing.
“I… I’m just—”
“Don’t say sorry.”
It’s like he plucked the word straight out of my throat, like he heard it forming in my head before I could choke it out. His voice is low, certain, like a rule I’d better follow if I want to keep breathing.
“Not for him. Not for this.”
His thumb drags slowly across my lower lip, lingering on the cut. The touch isn’t tender—it’s too controlled for that—but it sparks through me anyway, sharp and electric, like brushing against a live wire. My body jerks, traitorous, heat rushing everywhere at once.
“You’re not his.”
And the way he says it—like it’s fact written in stone—makes something deep in my chest crack open, aching and hungry.
