She wanted it?
Even my damaged mind hears myself. Understands what I'm saying. Comprehends just how fucking wrong this is.
"Scarletta. Look at me."
I look.
His face. Handsome. Concerned.
He came while he was killing him.
"You're safe," he says again.
I don't know what that word means anymore.
I don't know what any of this means anymore. I'm not safe. I thought I was. I walked that plank. But I saw the net. I jumped off the platform and did the zip line. But I was wearing the harness.
Itwassafe.
And then… it wasn't.
The water is warm.
That's the first thing that registers—warmth, seeping into muscles I didn't realize were clenched. He lowers me into the tub slowly and carefully.
I drift, detached, disconnected from myself. My thoughts scatter and reform, scatter and reform. Fragments of sensation that won't coalesce into coherent meaning.
The hot water.
His gentle hands.
Violence I can't quite reconcile with this tenderness.
My mind feels afloat. Drifting somewhere above my body, refusing to fully inhabit this moment. Like I'm watching myself from a great distance—a girl in a bathtub being washed by a man whose hands cut the fingers off a bad man.
The contradiction should mean something. Should provoke some response. But I can't hold onto thoughts long enough to examine them. They slip away before I can grasp their edges, leaving only this strange, cottony emptiness where my reactions should be.
He's washing me now. Gentle strokes with a soft cloth, starting at my shoulders, working down my arms.
His voice washes over me like the water. Meaningless sounds arranged in meaningless patterns. Small talk. He's makingsmall talkwhile he cleans the blood off my skin.
The cloth moves across my collarbone. Down my sternum. Gentle circles on my stomach.
He sighs.
The sound cuts through the static in my head. Sharp. Real.
"Scarletta." His hands stop moving. "Are you OK?"
Am I… OK?
The laugh almost escapes. I feel it burbling inside my chest.
Something dark, and bitter, and completely inappropriate. A sardonic little huff that would say everything my mouth can't form into words.
But then?—
He killed him with his bare hands.
