She shakes her head. “Because it’s us. How many enemies do your family have? I know my dad made enemies every day by giving out fake drugs, lacing drugs with more addictive shit to get them coming back. Robbing other smaller drug dealers. I always believed someone wanted us dead.”
I mull it over. “But you never came up with anything?”
Her shoulders sag, her head drops forward. “No. I tried my best but… there was no evidence of foul play. I couldn’t find anything that proved it wasn’t an accident. But I know in my heart it wasn’t.”
I close my eyes. It’s getting steamy in this shower now, my head getting dizzy with the heat and being this close to Elodie. But still, I keep my body close to hers, unable to move away.
“We know it was an accident, Elodie, this doesn’t change the facts. We just need to find out why they weren’t buried.”
She turns to me, looking like she wants to argue, like she desperately wants to believe in something other than the truth. Like what – that he’s still alive? There’s no way.
She mentioned it at the graveyard, and I understand that need more than anyone. But just because their bodies aren’t in the ground it doesn’t change the fact that they were burned to a crisp in a fire caused by a faulty bomb. It doesn’t bring them back to life. It doesn’t change anything. All it does is raise two questions. Where are they and why weren’t they buried? That’sall. It doesn’t make it a murder mystery. It doesn’t make it anything.
I’m prepared to voice this to her, to tear her futile hopes down before they materialise into something dangerous, when her head droops forward again, and she turns away from me. She’s exhausted. She doesn’t have the energy to fight me on this.
Good, because I don’t either.
“I tried so hard, you know,” she says. The quietness in her voice urges me to stroke her, run my hands down her arms, the callouses on my palms at odds with the softness of her skin. “When Lewis got killed, I tried so hard to find his killer. But Dad was such a bastard… he just hurt me over and over. Telling me I was clinging to something that wouldn’t bring him back. That I was just making things worse. It made me so angry. That he didn’t want to know who killed him. That he didn’t care enough. He was such a coward.”
I don’t know why or how… but my lips are now pressing on the peak of her shoulder. She gasps at the contact. I break away from her quickly, dragging my attention down to my own body and beginning to scrape any leftover clumps of mud. Grief is a weird fucking thing.
She turns around and I avoid her gaze but it’s obvious she can see I’m hard. It’s like a goddamn pole between us.
“He is a coward, Elodie, but it’s fine. We don’t need him.” I dare to look up to her because I need her to hear this. “Youdon’t need him.”
She nods and lifts a shoulder. “I know. It just makes me so mad how he didn’t care. How he made me stop looking. How I was too weak to defy him. Too scared.”
I look down at her, this little brat, and find it so hard to believe she could have been too scared. Of anything.
“You don’t have to be scared now, he can’t touch you again,” I say.
“I know that too. I’m not scared of him anymore.” Her eyes drift down my body, freezing me in place. “Back then I was, but I stopped long ago. I just stopped caring. It never got worse, I just stopped feeling after a while.”
She drops her face and beyond my better judgement, I drop my hands from my chest and cup her face, bringing it back up. “But you never stopped fighting, and that’s what matters.”
She offers me a weak smile, and I let her go before this strange warmth in my chest transpires into anything more than I can cope with.
I finish rubbing my body down while she stares off to the side, not really paying attention, which I’m grateful for. I think if she paid any attention to my rock-hard cock I wouldn’t control myself. I pick the sponge back up and start washing properly.
It catches her attention, and she lifts a small hand, placing it over mine against the sponge on my stomach. I’m turned to stone beneath the gentle touch, and I practically catch fire when her eyes come up to meet mine once more, pinning me in place. She takes the sponge and begins stroking it over my body. My hand drops to the side and my throat runs dry.
I let her wash me, powerless to do anything else. Her other hand comes up to my chest, and she works the soap over my skin with her delicate fingers. The sensation of her hand on me sends my mind reeling. I brace a hand on the wall to keep myself upright.
Her eyes break from mine and travel down, passing over all the ink and the hundred stories and secrets they hold.
“Do they all mean something?” she whispers, looking at the justice scales in the middle of my chest.
My voice is thick, croaked, when I say, “I wouldn’t engrave something into my body without a reason.”
“Are they all bad reasons?”
It hits me then as I look down at her skin. How our bodies are so different, but in the same vein. I mark mine on purpose, to permanently etch my darkest times and nightmares, whereas hers is permanently etched with the same things, only she had no choice in hers.
Dismissing yet another bout of nausea, I say, “Do they look sentimental and soppy to you?”
The corners of her lips twitch upward. “I guess not.” Her eyes find mine again. “I think you may be more sentimental than you let on, though.”
This unfreezes me. I take the sponge from her and finish washing. “Whatever you think you’ve deduced about me tonight – it’s wrong.”
