My thoughts drift back to Marian’s house. To Ethan’s laugh, loud and unguarded, and the way it filled the room without apology. To the ease of that space that’s been earned over time. Years of loss, yes, but also years of rebuilding. Nothing erased. Just reshaped.
Rowan’s family isn’t an idea anymore. They’re real to me now. Faces I recognize, voices I could pick out in a crowd. I know how Ethan moves closer when Rowan enters a room. How Marian listens first, considering carefully before she answers. I’ve seen how they move through their home, and how the day naturally organizes itself around habits formed long before I arrived.
That knowledge creates vulnerability. And vulnerability becomes leverage. Which makes them my responsibility.
I don’t debate it or wait for circumstances to decide. In my world, responsibility is taken before someone else can use the opening.
I remain still as morning light traces the edges of the room, pale and cold as it filters through the gaps in the blackout curtains. Rowan is still asleep on her stomach, one arm tucked beneath the pillow, her face turned away from me. I can see the line of her spine from here, the slow rise and fall of her back, the dark fan of her hair against the pillow. There’s a small bruise blooming at her hip where my fingers gripped.
I reach out and rest my hand between her shoulder blades. Not to wake her. Just to feel her breathing. She stirs anyway.
“Kiren.” She turns her head on the pillow and looks at me with one eye open, the other still pressed into the pillow. A slow blink. Then a small, unguarded smile that she probably doesn't know she's giving me. I catalog it the way I catalog everything important.
“What time is it?” she asks.
“Early.”
She closes her eyes again. “That's not a time.”
“Five-fifteen.”
She releases a sound that isn’t quite a groan but is related to one. “I have to be at the hospital soon.”
“Come,” I say.
I help her sit up slowly, my hand at her back, and she lets me without comment.
The bathroom is warm when we step inside. I reach past her and turn on the shower, adjusting the temperature until thesteam begins to rise. Behind me, I hear her inhale deeply, the sound of her body beginning to come back to itself.
When I turn around, she's sitting on the edge of the tub, still loose-limbed from sleep, looking up at me. The morning light spills through the frosted window, softening her face in pale gold.
I hold out my hand. She takes it.
The water is hot. Not scalding, but close. The type of heat that opens you up and unknots the places you didn't know were knotted. She stands under the spray and tips her head back, letting the water take her hair flat against her shoulders, and I watch the tension leave her. Her shoulders drop, and her jaw unclenches.
I reach for the shampoo.
“Kiren, I can-”
“I know you can.” I turn her gently by the shoulders until her back is to me. “Let me.”
She pauses, and then she lets me take care of her.
I work the shampoo into a lather between my palms first. My hands slide into her wet hair at the base of her neck, and she makes a sound so soft it’s swallowed by the water.
I take my time. My fingers work in slow circles from the nape upward, moving through the dark weight of her hair, and I feel the moment it gets to her because her hands come up and wraploosely around my wrists. Not directing. Not stopping me. Just holding on.
“That's feels good,” she says quietly.
I don't answer. I just keep going.
I rinse her hair slowly, tipping her back into the spray with my hand at her forehead so the water doesn't run into her eyes. She lets her head rest against my shoulder. The small of her back is against my chest. The water runs down both of us, and I stand there in it, holding her like this.
I rinse the last of the shampoo from her hair. She turns slowly to face me, water tracing unbroken paths down her face, and she doesn’t lift a hand to stop it. I reach for her, cupping her face, slowly guiding her closer. She leans into my palm, just slightly, eyes closing as if the choice requires no thought at all. The simplicity of it lands harder than anything else. Something I didn’t realize I was holding back gives way, and the last distance between us disappears.
“Ty moya,” I say.You're mine.
“Yours,” she agrees.
