“Please.”
“He’s unpredictable when he’s like this.”
“I won’t hurt her.”
My gaze cuts to Reth, his head still low, and Ian inches back, just a little. “You sure, man?”
“I won’t. Hurt her.”
Ian’s eyes lock on mine, keeps it there, reading me the way he does, that sharp green assessment that misses nothing. Then helooks at Andrei, tips his head once toward the door, and they both straighten.
As he passes me on the way out, he doesn’t say a word, which is the kindest thing he could do.
Andrei follows, and the door clicks shut behind them, the room going quiet except for the water.
I stand there, taking him in, my heart beating impossibly fast.
Reth hasn’t moved. Shoulders hunched forward in defeat, wet, dark hair plastered against his forehead. The buff—that black fabric mask he always wears—remains in place over the lower half of his face, now sodden and clinging to the contours of his jaw. It pulls at my insides, the picture of him looking both threatening and helpless.
His chest rises and falls in shallow, uneven pulls, like breathing is something he has to remind himself to do. Every line of him looks… wrong. Not just injured. Not just exhausted. Broken. Like something inside him has been cracked open and left that way.
It’s a careful movement as I take one of the folded towels from the metal bar and lean into the spray to twist the faucet handle. My hand’s shaking a little as I lower myself in front of him, not caring that water seeps into my tights.
He doesn’t look up, and I wait. Patiently. Just watching him. Just being there with him.
After a long moment, slowly, like it costs him everything, he raises his head and his eyes find mine. My breath catches, because for the first time since I’ve known him, there’s no filter. No distance. No carefully maintained wall.
Just him.
The expression on his face is something stripped down to bone, raw and open, silently bleeding. It’s the look of someone who has finally run out of places to hide the broken parts.
His gaze doesn’t waver. It doesn’t flinch. It simplyholds—open, unguarded, like he’s handing me the last piece of himself, waiting to see if I’ll crush it or keep it.
I want to keep it.
Lifting my hand with the towel, I let it hover between us. A silent way of asking permission. There’s no rush. No sound except the slow drip from the showerhead and the shallow rasp of his breathing. I watch his face—really watch—for the smallest flinch, the tiniest furrow between his brows, anything that says stop.
Nothing comes.
With the towel between my fingers, I press it gently against his temple, over the smeared edge where white meets black, where blood has dried into rust-colored streaks. The paint gives way in slow, reluctant strokes, clinging to the terry cloth like it doesn’t want to let go.
Careful, reverent, I move in tiny circles, tracing the arch of his brow, the hollow at the corner of his eye, revealing the bruise there.
He doesn’t blink, his lashes dark and wet, spiked together at the tips, but his gaze doesn’t move from my face. It’s like he’s trying to decide whether I’m real or not, thinking I’ll vanish if he looks away. So I keep wiping, easing to the other side, watching as the paint gets stripped away one stroke at a time.
Deep inside, my heart beats a staccato, like the blood in my veins knows this moment means something. Like this matters. That it’s the line I’m choosing to cross, the one that will change everything and leave no way back.
A breath snags in my throat as my fingers hover at the edge of the buff, then curl gently around the damp seam where mask meets skin. Touching him here feels like reaching into the darkest part of him—the part he’s hidden from the world, from me, from himself—and the intimacy of it steals the air from my lungs. I feel the tremor in his jaw under my fingertips, and I know he feels it too, this quiet, terrifying surrender.
Until I made myself…unpretty.
Our eyes stay locked as I slowly—so slowly it feels like time is stretching thin—ease it down. Abruptly, he grabs my wrist, and I suck in a breath. Neither of us moves, his thumb resting over my pulse point. I can feel it, my heartbeat racing against his skin.
“If you want me to trust you,” I say quietly, “you need to trust me, too.”
For a second, I expect him to pull back, to get up and rush out. But instead, his grip loosens to a touch, fingertips lingering before slowly letting go. It’s a quiet acceptance, and I use it.
Real unpretty.
