By the time we’re inside the house, he still hasn’t spoken and neither have I. He won’t even really look at me. The shaking in his hands has taken over his entire body, and if I had to guess, I’dsay his physical pain and adrenaline crash and shame spiral are all coming down on him at once.
The thought makes me hurt for him so hard it feels like I might crumble, but I can’t. I need to focus. Time seems slow as I take a deep breath, tapping each fingertip against my thumb a few times, letting the repetitive sensation ground me in the moment and pull me out of my head.
After a long minute, I feel calmer. When I reach for Cade, gently grabbing his arms from behind, he jumps. But as soon as I pull him close, he relaxes into me. His back presses against my chest, letting me take some of his weight, as the shaking gets worse.
“Let’s get you cleaned up.”
My whisper sounds like a shout in the stillness of the empty house, but Cade nods anyway.
I walk him to the bathroom, taking over stripping him down when his swollen hand is useless and the other is shaking too hard to be helpful. There’s eyeliner smeared over his face, mixed with the dark, dried blood, and his cheek and eye on the left are already swollen to hell. I pull off his shirt with one hand while reaching in to turn on the shower with the other, making sure the water is as cool as it can be without freezing him.
Stepping into the tub is precarious. Cade is long: long limbs, long torso, muscular but rangy; and now that he’s so unsteady it makes him look like he could topple over at the slightest breeze. I quickly shed my own clothes, also covered in blood and other fluids I don’t want to think about, so I can step into the shower with him and make sure he doesn’t fall.
I stand behind him, both of us facing the showerhead, so I can feel how he flinches when the water hits all his cuts and scrapes. I loop one arm around his stomach and press him close to me, leaning the other hand against the wall in front of himfor support. He stiffens initially, like he’s trying to hold himself upright, then seems to wilt all at once.
His good hand splays over the tile next to mine, and that hand combined with my entire body pressed up against his from behind seems like the only reason he’s still upright. I can see how hard his muscles twitch and tremble, and he bows his head low, letting the water run down the back of his neck and looking like he’s trying to crumble to the ground.
“Shh,” I whisper in his ear, because I can’t think of anything else to say. I spread my fingers wide over his abs and dig them into his flesh, reminding him that I’m here. I press my lips to the warm skin behind his ear, trying to project some sort of calm directly into his brain. “It’ll be okay.”
I didn’t want to say that it is okay, because we both know it’s far from it.
His eyebrow is bleeding again now that it’s wet, running thin rivulets of red down the side of his neck that he doesn’t seem to notice. His knees bend suddenly like they gave out, and together we stumble forward until we’re closer to the wall. Cade’s forehead hits the tile and the shaking gets worse, feeling more like how you move when you’re sobbing, except no sound is coming out of him, just harsh, ragged breaths.
Oh, Cade.
Tears fill my eyes abruptly as I can practically feel the anxious pain running off of him.
I don’t know what to do.
I need… I need help.
But there’s no one here but us.
A stray tear spills out of me—not for the first time tonight—and I settle for squeezing him tightly, burying my face in the back of his neck and holding him as close to me as possible.
I press shapeless kisses into his skin, trying to pour all my unspoken love into him to help hold him up while he shuddersand threatens to collapse. He’s breathing more and more heavily, like a panic attack is attempting to open up inside him, but he’s fighting it.
Sliding my hand up to sit over his heart, I take a deep breath, making his body move with mine. It’s something he’s done for me countless times before, and it’s the only thing I can think of to help. I take a deep, slow breath, waiting for him to join me. Eventually, his body shudders and his chest moves beneath my hand.
We do it again and again, with Cade gradually feeling steadier beneath me, even though the shaking continues.
Eventually, I lean back. The water is cold and we’ve been in here too long. I need him to lie down before he collapses.
“Let me wash you up, baby,” I say softly in his ear.
Out of the two of us, he’s the one into using pet names. I always feel awkward about it, like I’m doing it wrong. But it feels natural right now. Cade doesn’t stiffen when I move him, staying soft beneath my hands until I’ve got him facing me, leaning backward against the tile. He’s out of the stream of water now, with most of it hitting me inconveniently close to my face, but I think he needs the support.
I focus on washing him up quickly, squirting soap into my hands and then moving over him with quick, gentle strokes. I wash the sweat and dirt from his chest, then his arms, skipping his swollen hand that I’ll need to do something about in a minute.
I wash his legs and his groin, his cock soft and vulnerable in my hand. When I move up to his face, he winces again, but it needs to be done. The soap obviously stings, making him hiss and turn his face to the side. I sweep my thumbs over his cheeks a few times as gently as I can before I call it good. His eyes are still dark with makeup I’m not going to scrub off right now, butthe worst of the blood and smudging is off his skin, revealing the true color of the bruising below.
When I’ve done as much as I can, I turn off the water and step out, getting a towel ready before pulling him after me. It’s hard to get him dry without being too rough, so I do my best but focus on getting him out of the bathroom and into bed. I throw the towel on the dresser, too wrung out to care about the mess right now, and then peel back the covers so he can climb under.
He lies down obligingly, but looks tense again, instead of relaxed. After a second of leaning against the headboard, he arches his back awkwardly, an expression of pain crossing his face as he holds up his trembling hand between us.
“I, uh,” he coughs, his voice even rougher now than it was before, making guilt bubble through me for a second as I think of how roughly I fucked his throat right before his dad ended up fucking hitting him in it. “I think I broke my hand.”
The words make something inside me clench abruptly, my eyes filling with stupid, pointless tears and my stomach swooping like I might throw up. I have to swallow hard before I can speak.
