I lift my arms to reach my hair.
They shake. Violently. My forearms burn with the effort of just holding them up, and my hands are useless, trembling so badly I can barely make a fist. I manage to get my fingers into the wet tangles, but I can’t work them through. Can’t find the strength to scrub.
The tears come without warning.
Not sobs. I don’t have the energy for sobs. Just water leaking from my eyes, mixing with the shower spray, sliding down my cheeks. I’m crying and I can’t even do that properly.
You stupid, stubborn idiot. Look at you. Look at what you’ve done to yourself.
I let my arms fall. Press my forehead against my knees. The water drums against my back, warm now, steam rising around me.
I don’t know how long I sit there.
Long enough for the water to go from warm to hot to lukewarm again. Long enough for my skin to prune and my tears to dry up. Long enough for me to lose track of where I end and the steam begins.
The shower door slides open.
I jerk upright, or try to. My arms cross over my chest, a reflexive cover that’s laughably inadequate. My limbs feel like wet sand, heavy and slow.
“Get out!” The words crack in my throat. “Get the fuck out!”
He stands just outside the spray, shirt sleeves rolled to his elbows, expression infuriatingly calm. Like he walked in onsomething mundane. Like I’m not naked and crying on his shower floor.
“You’ve been in here for thirty minutes, Violet.”
“I said?—”
“You can’t wash your hair.” Not a question. A diagnosis. Clinical and precise. “Stop pretending you can.”
I want to argue. Want to spit venom at him, tell him I’d rather drown than let him touch me. But my arms are still trembling where they’re crossed over my breasts. Pathetic. Useless. The evidence of my failure is written all over my body.
Silence betrays me louder than any words.
He steps into the shower space. Kicks off his shoes, leather, expensive, probably ruined now. His trouser hems darken as water soaks into the fabric.
Instead of facing me, he kneelsbehindme. Settles onto the wet marble at my back, giving me his chest instead of his eyes.
“Lean your head back.”
I should refuse. Should drag myself up and out and away from him, even if it means crawling naked across the bathroom floor.
Instead, my neck gives up. My head tips back against his thigh, because I literally cannot hold it up anymore.
His hands slide into my hair.
Fingers firm and sure, working shampoo into my scalp with steady, circular motions. The pressure is perfect. Not too hard, not too soft. He knows exactly what he’s doing.
And then his smell hits me.
Expensive soap. Clean cotton. Warm citrus and wood and leather, subtle and complex. He’s close enough now that every inhale fills my lungs with him.
Heat coils low in my stomach. Not hunger. Something else. Something sharp and wrong that has no business existing in this moment. My thighs clench involuntarily.
I freeze in horror.
No. Absolutely not. This is not?—
I order my body to stop. Command every nerve ending to shut down, to remember who he is, what he’s done. The betrayal of my own flesh is worse than the nudity.
