"Thank you." The words were inadequate. They were enormous. They were everything and nothing and I said them because they were the only words I could manage that weren't I was the leak or I love you or I'm sorry I made you do this.
"I'll be right outside."
He closed the door.
I stood in the bathroom and pressed my back against the wall and slid down until I was sitting on the cold tile floor, and I let myself fall apart. Tears tracking down my swollen face, each one stinging as it crossed the split skin and the bruises, my body shaking with sobs that I muffled with my hand pressed over my mouth because he was right outside the door and I didn't want him to hear over the running water.
Not because I was angry. Not because I was afraid. Because the man on the other side of that door had destroyed himself to save me, and I was crying because I didn't deserve it, and if I told him why, I might lose him, and if I didn't tell him, the secret would eat me alive.
I sat on the floor and cried until the tears dried up and my ribs burned from the effort and the tile under my legs had warmed to my body temperature.
Then I wiped my face. Stood up. Took off my shirt and got in the shower.
The hot water hit the cuts and bruises and I hissed, but it seemed the doctor was right. I didn't feel like anything was broken, just swollen and tender, mostly cuts and bruises.
The sobs tried to come back while I shampooed my hair, but I swallowed them whole. I was done crying.
I dressed in the clothes he'd left. Soft cotton. A t-shirt that smelled like it had been washed in the same detergent as the sheets, something generic and bought in bulk. Sweatpants that were too long but had a drawstring. No bra. But with the state of my ribs, that was fine by me.
When I opened the door, he was right where he said he'd be. Leaning against the wall beside the bathroom, close enough to hear if I'd fallen, far enough to give me space.
"Come sit," he said. "I need to look at your injuries."
"You've already looked at them. And so has the doctor."
"I cleaned them while you were out. But some of them need to be bandaged. And I need to check for signs of internal bleeding."
His tone was careful, and I could hear what it cost him to even get the words out, so I let him lead me to the sitting area in the bedroom. He sat me down and knelt on the floor in front of me, and I heard him open something, a first aid kit maybe. I heard the plastic snap of a case and the rustle of sterile packaging being torn.
He touched my face, and I flinched.
I didn't mean to. It was involuntary—a full-body jerk away from his hand, my muscles locking, my breath catching, my body remembering what those hands had done the last time they'd been this close. The warehouse slammed back into me with physical force. His knuckles against my cheekbone, the crack of impact, the way I'd tasted copper on my tongue?—
"It's sorry," he said softly. "I should've warned you."
I could hear the pain in his voice, and the way he tried to hide it.
I forced myself still. "It's okay. Go ahead."
He touched me again. Carefully this time. So carefully it almost hurt more than the his fist had.
He cleaned the cut on my cheekbone. Applied something cool that stung and then numbed. His hands were steady. The hands of a man who knew how to take apart a body and, apparently, how to put one back together.
When he was finished, he hesitated—just for a moment—before saying, "I need to check your ribs."
I nodded, and he lifted the hem of my shirt, holding just under my breasts. I felt the air hit the bruised skin and heard his breath catch. A small sound. Barely audible. But I heard everything.
"How bad is it?" I asked.
"It's not good." His fingers mapped the damage with clinical precision, pressing gently at each rib, testing. "But they're not broken. Maybe fractured. How's your stomach?"
"It's okay," I told him. "I'm not nauseous anymore."
"Good. That's good."
He wrapped my torso with a bandage, one arm reaching around my back, the other feeding the bandage, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his body so close to mine. The intimacy of it was unbearable. The hurt and the comfort collapsing into each other until I couldn't separate them.
He finished wrapping, and taped the bandage down. His hands lingered on my waist for a fraction of a second longer than necessary before he pulled them away.
