"I'm sure we can clean them up. Stop worrying about all that. Put your hand on my shoulder and lean on me." He pushes the sweatpants down and I step out of them. After removing the knives from the pockets, he sets them on the counter. Then he strips himself, and we're both standing in the bathroom in the steam. There's nothing sexual about showering together this time. Only two people with an evil man's blood on them that needs to be cleansed.
We step in. The water hits my shoulders and runs down my chest. It's warm and I close my eyes and let it take the night off my skin.
Tex washes me gently. He starts with my hair, his big hands working shampoo through the strands, his fingers against my scalp. The sensation is so gentle that my throat tightens. Then my shoulders. My back. My chest.
He washes himself quickly then helps me out. After drying me off with a towel, he picks me up and sets me on the bathroom counter. I love that he's so big and strong. The marble is cold under my thighs, but his face is level with mine for once because the counter puts me at his height. I can look straight into his eyes without tilting my head back.
He takes my right hand. The one that wore the brass knuckles. The one that broke Ron's teeth and his ribs and his face. He holds it under the light and examines it, turning thehand over, pressing gently on each knuckle, watching my face for pain.
"Nothing's broken," he says. "Swollen. Bruised. But not broken. Sheila's knuckles did their job."
"I can't believe Sheila keeps brass knuckles in her purse. Who does that?"
Tex lets out a chuckle. "I guarantee that's not the only weapon in that purse."
He gets the ointment from the medicine cabinet. Carefully, he squeezes a line of it onto his finger and works it into each knuckle, each joint, the swollen places where the brass met bone and the bone held. His hands are enormous around mine. The hands of a man who has handled broken things all his life and knows how to touch them without making them worse.
"Does this sting?" he asks.
"A little."
"Means it's working."
He does the left hand with the same attention. When he's finished, he holds my hands in his palms and he doesn't say anything. He just holds them the way you hold something that has done incredible work and needs to rest.
Then he picks me up again. One arm under my knees, one behind my back, and I'm off the counter and against his chest. I let him carry me because being carried by Tex is not the same as being handled. Being carried by Tex is the opposite of every hand that's ever moved my body without asking. This is a man who picks me up because he wants to carry me when I can't stand on my own.
He puts me down on the bed and climbs in beside me. I settle against his chest. My head on the place between hisshoulder and his collarbone that was built specifically for me. The place that fits, the place that's mine.
Then I start talking, babbling really, and I can't stop.
The words come the way the shaking came—in waves, my brain processing the night by pushing it out through my mouth. I'm the one who doesn't talk. I'm the one who holds everything inside. But tonight, the words won't stay in. Tonight, they come pouring out and I let them come because this is how I'm healing. Tex knows it and he listens.
"When he grabbed my arm," I begin, "my body recognized him before my brain did. Like muscle memory. My arm already knew his hand because it's been grabbed by that hand a thousand times and the skin remembers even when my brain is trying to forget."
"I saw the grab from the door," Tex says quietly. "I saw the way your tray went flying."
"And when he yelled at me—take that fucking shirt off, we're going home—for one second, Tex. One heartbeat. The old training fired. My mouth almost automatically said,yes sir. I felt the words start to form. It was right there. Four years of training. Like a reflex."
"But you didn't say it, baby."
"No, instead I looked him right in the eye and said,I AM home,you're in my house now, bitch.When those words came out of my mouth. I don't know how to describe it. Like everything I've ever known was overwritten. As if the machine I was before crashed and rebooted and the new version doesn't have ayes sirfunction. It's left the building."
"Baby, that's the greatest thing I've ever heard come out of anyone's mouth," Tex says. "I want that on a t-shirt.My yes sir function has left the building. You can wear it every day."
"Don't get t-shirts printed up," I tell him before he really goes and does it. "He drew back his hand and then you hit him and I didn't even see you coming. You were just BAM! The sound his jaw made when your fist connected—"
"Oh baby, that was a good hit. I'm not going to lie. I can't describe how good it felt, too."
"And then you got behind him and he couldn't move. I couldn't believe it. The man who terrorized me for years was looking me right in the eyes and he couldn't move. My man had him in a chokehold and he was helpless. I never knew that was possible. In a million years, I never imagined there could be a scenario when he was the one who was helpless."
"Anybody can be helpless, Stormy. You just need the right person holding them. You just called meyour man. I like that."
I grin over at him. "And then you said,'take what is yours to take'. At first, I didn't understand what you meant. I didn't know that was the plan. Did you always plan for it to go that way? To hold him forme? Was that always what tonight was about?"
"From the beginning. Every piece of tonight was about getting you in front of him with him unable to move. The shirt, the parking lot, Denny, all of it. I didn't set this up so I could beat him. Though I wanted to. I set it up so you could because the vengeance was yours to take."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
