That he was certainly just as anxious.
Just as nervous.
Just as human.
That he was still grieving.
Still in pain.
Still broken, despite trying so hard to put himself back together again.
And suddenly, absolutely nothing mattered anymore.
Nothing but one thing.
“Theo.”
Audrey took a step into the shower and closed the door after her. But as soon as she leaned under the stream of water, she drew back, sucking a hiss through her teeth. It was so hot it had nearly scalded her, which explained why Theo’s skin was so raw and red, battered by the unrelenting high-pressure jets streaming from both shower heads. She turned the temperature down to a more tolerable level and stepped up to him, dipping her head beneath the water and bending to try to get a look at his face. She took one of his hands in hers and peeled it away.
When he finally looked at her, his eyes were red and swollen, his chest heaving with tired, labored breaths. He pressed his lips together, rolling them while he tried to get them to stop quivering, but he gave up as soon as his gaze met hers. A single tear slipped out of his scarred right eye and drowned in the water from the shower soaking them both.
“My mom’s wrong, Audrey. Itismy fault,” he croaked before swallowing thickly and closing his eyes again, his voice ragged and hoarse. His right hand sought hers out, but it was trembling too hard to catch her fingers. “It’s my fault my dad died.” He clutched at his heart with his left hand. “It’smyfault.”
“Oh, Theo, no. No.” She shook her head. “It was an accident—you’ve told me that much. If that’s true, it can’t be your fault. An accident’s no one’s fault.”
His face broke.
And when he sobbed again, Audrey couldn’t take it anymore.
She needed to hold him.
If the large medical shower chair he was sitting in could take his weight, it could take hers too. She lifted one leg and slid it around his waist, slipping it through the wide gap between the back of the chair and the seat before following it with the other, using the armrests to balance. When she settled carefully into his lap, she wrapped her arms around his neck and tucked his head under her chin, pulling him close and holding him tight.
Nothing separated them now.
He melted into her.
Theo encircled her in his arms and buried his face in the crook of her neck, his shoulders shaking while he cried. His tears mixed with the water coursing down her bare skin, and it was all Audrey could do to hold him steady, gently combing through his hair with her nails and pressing her lips softly to the top of his head.
She wasn’t entirely sure what exactly had possessed her to wrap herself around him like she did. But her instincts told her that he needed to have her skin against his, that he needed to know she understood how raw and vulnerable he was—and how sacred his trust in her was now that he’d finally shown her this part of himself. A part he’d tried so hard not to.
Audrey had never been so close with someone before; she’d never allowed herself to be. It was so much easier to keep people at arm’s length, to hold others at bay. If you didn’t let them in, they couldn’t hurt you. If they held a knife, they couldn’t cut deep. Even her past experiences had only been shallow slices of the blade, surface wounds that healed quickly or only left the lightest of scars that rapidly faded to white, mere memories of transitory trauma.
She’d been stabbed once before, and it had been a near-fatal wound to her heart.
She’d learned an important lesson that day, and she’d learned it young. Fartooyoung.
If you kept that distance, you could keep yourself intact, whole, safe. You could survive. It was the one lesson she’d learned clearly over the years:
If you didn’t let anyone in, they couldn’t throw you away.
But Theo was different.
As his trembling hands drew her closer to him, one of them wide enough to span the entire width between her shoulder blades, Audrey knew. She knew with absolute certainty that she’d let him keep burying himself into her so deep, he’d burrow straight into her heart. He’d already found his way there long ago, right where she’d once been wounded so gravely.
Her scar ran as deep as the one on his face, only hers was in her soul.
Theo understood that.
