“You’re still shaking,” he told me. Then he suddenly changed the subject. “Tell me about what your life was like growing up.”
I frowned. “W-What?” My skin burned where I’d scrubbed myself and his hands hurt where he touched me, but I felt like he was the only thing keeping me from falling down the spiral of my hysteria.
He picked up the bottle of shampoo and squeezed some into his palm. “Growing up. I wanna know what you were like when you were a little girl.” Lathering it up in his hands, he started washing my hair. “What’s your natural hair color?”
“My hair?” I was having a hard time keeping up with the conversation. I tried to concentrate on what he was saying.
“Yeah, your hair. Is it blonde? Red? Brown?”
“Um…” I tried to think back. “It was really light when I was little. But then it turned kind of dishwater blonde when I was a teenager.”
“How long have you been coloring it?”
My eyes closed as his strong fingers massaged my scalp. “I didn’t. Not until I came here.”
“And you chose pink. Lean your head back.”
I did as he told me, grateful to have someone else take over the task of washing me because it was everything I could do right now just to keep my panic in check. “I like pink.”
“I like pink, too,” he said quietly. “Especially on you.”
Once the shampoo was rinsed, he conditioned my hair as I stood there like some kind of broken doll, moving only when he directed me to do so. The entire time, he talked, keeping me distracted and not allowing my mind to wander too much. He asked me questions. Told me stories about things he and his friends had done when they were younger that sounded too outrageous to be real.
“Your clothes are getting wet.”
He blew off my concern. “They’ll dry,” he said.
I looked at this man, a man I barely knew, really. A man who was hard and dangerous. A killer. And yet, here he stood in the shower with me as I fought not to break into a million pieces, taking care of me. He’d found me all the way in Mexico. And not only that, he’d come after me himself and brought me home. I knew he’d killed everyone who was in that house, and I didn’t care. I was glad.
What kind of person did that make me?
“Ready to get out?”
I blinked, pulling myself from my thoughts. “Yeah.” The water was starting to cool down, and I shivered.
Enzo reached around me to shut off the water, and I inhaled his dark forest scent, already so familiar to me. It smelled like home.
I was home.
Out of nowhere, I burst into tears.
“Hey, hey. What’s this?”
“I’m s-sorry.” I tried to get control of myself, but all I could do was stand there, naked and cold, with my wet hair hanging over my face as violent sobs wracked my body.
Without another word, Enzo opened the shower door and grabbed a white towel off the towel rack. He let me cry as he dried me off, starting with my hair and then working his way down my body. Despite his previous aggressive behavior toward me, I didn’t feel nervous or threatened.
I felt…cared for.
When I was wrapped in the large towel, he held my hand and helped me step out of the shower. Then I waited as he pulled off his wet shirt and jeans and threw them back into the shower. In only his wet boxer briefs, he placed a hand on my lower back and led me into the bedroom. “Do you wanna get dressed?”
Sniffling, I nodded my head.
“Okay, why don’t you do that while I dry off and take care of my wet clothes. Then we’ll eat.” Grabbing some dry clothes for himself, he took them back into the bathroom and closed the door behind him, leaving it cracked a few inches. I heard the shower come on again.
On shaky legs, I walked over to the bed and sat down on the edge near the nightstand. There was a box of tissues there, and I grabbed a bunch and blew my nose. Then I used the towel to clean up my face. I felt better. Calmer. I guess losing my shit for a few minutes wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
By the time Enzo came out, with wet hair and in clean jeans and a T-shirt, I was dressed in the T-shirt and yoga pants his boss had brought for me and sitting in the other room. There was no underwear, no bra, but I was okay with that. He’d gotten me butternut squash soup and crusty bread with butter from somewhere, and it was so good it almost made me start crying again. “Thank you for the soup,” I told him when he joined me on the couch. He was a big guy, and he made me feel tiny sitting beside him. My eyes felt swollen and my voice was ragged from crying, but the violent urge to scream was little more than a tickle in my gut.
