“Talk about tragic,” he replies dryly.
I huff a laugh and slide off the bed, the blanket slipping off my naked body. Lucian’s appreciative gaze tracks the movement automatically before he catches himself and looks away with visible effort.
That small restraint does something to me.
I pad toward my suitcase, rummaging through my new clothes, acutely aware of him behind me. I can feel his attention like heat on my skin. When I straighten, I catch him watching me again, jaw tight, eyes unreadable.
“You’re doing that thing again,” I say.
“What thing?”
“The thing where you look at me like you’re deciding how much trouble you’re willing to risk.”
His mouth quirks. “I already crossed that line.”
“Clearly.”
He crawls across the bed on his knees, stopping just shy of the edge of the bed, crowding me. The proximity is deliberate and controlled in a way that makes my pulse stutter.
“A lot is going on today,” he says carefully.
His gaze flicks to the bathroom door, then back to me. Something shifts in his expression.
“Before we get dressed,” he says quietly, “we should probably shower.”
My breath catches. “Because—”
“Because we’re going to have to face the world,” he replies. “And I think you should be grounded before we do.”
It is the grounding that undoes me. Not the want or the need, just the composed: I want you steady.
I study his face, searching for the edge, the demand. What I find instead is restraint wrapped around need, like it’s taking real effort to hold it together.
“Together?” I ask.
He nods once. “Only if you want.”
There’s no hesitation in me. “I want.”
He moves toward the bathroom first, steadying himself with the wall and the cabinetry in a way that tugs at something tender inside me. He hasn’t put his prosthetic back on, but he shifts with practiced ease, his movements economical in a way that speaks of the time he’s spent learning his body all over again. He turns on the water before stepping into the shower, then shifts just enough to reach the built-in bench and lowers himself onto it. The water hits his shoulders, rolling down his chest,steam rising around him in soft, curling waves. There’s nothing self-conscious in the way he sits.
I follow him inside, and the heat wraps around me immediately, blurring the edges of the room until all I can see clearly is him. He looks up as I step closer, and there’s something in his eyes that makes my breath catch—a softness, a question, a kind of reverence I’m not sure I deserve.
“Can I wash you?” he asks, and the way he says it feels like an offering rather than a request.
“Yes,” I say, and the word feels steady in my mouth. “You can.”
He nods again, almost relieved, and reaches for the soap. And that’s when I realize what I’m seeing: he hasn’t angled himself away or tried to hide the place where his body changed after the accident. He’s sitting there without the prosthetic, without the careful positioning he has used in the past week to soften the moment, without the tension in his shoulders that tells me he’s bracing for my reaction.
He hasn’t let me see him like this without preparing himself first. But now he’s simply here, letting me take him in without apology or explanation, trusting me with a part of him he’s always tried to protect.
The realization settles deep in my chest, and I step closer before I can think better of it. The heat of the water, the closeness of the space, the way he watches me all fold together into something that feels fragile and enormous at the same time.
He lathers the soap in his hands, and when he looks up again, there’s a question in his eyes he doesn’t voice. I move toward him until the spray hits my shoulders too, until the warmth of him is something I can feel even without touching him.
I’m surprised by how steady I feel, how natural it is to stand here with him like this, and that the sight of him without his prosthetic doesn’t make me flinch or hesitate. If anything, itdraws me closer, because this is the man I’ve known and have missed, but is also so different from the man who spent so long trying to shield me from the parts of himself he thought were too much.
He shifts slightly on the bench, finding his balance with a familiarity that makes my throat tighten, and I reach out without thinking, letting my fingers brush through his loose, wet hair. He sighs, a quiet sound that feels like something inside him loosening.
