I force an eye open, blinking against the water streaming down my face. It takes a minute for the scene to make sense.
We’re in a bathtub. The old-fashioned kind. Oval porcelain with a showerhead high above us. Water rains down, freezing cold, soaking through everything. I’m wedged between his spread legs, my back pressed to his chest, his arms around me to keep me upright.
I scan dully, noticing details my brain can’t quite process. His jeans, darkened and clinging to his thighs, the line of muscle tense under the fabric, the way the water runs over his hands where they’re wrapped around me.
I’m in my nightgown. It’s soaked through, the thin fabric plastered to my skin, leaving nothing to the imagination. I get one second to register that. One second to feel the flicker of embarrassment before the sound of the water dulls. The room blurs.
And it all goes black.
***
It’s daytime now. The light hurts my eyes even though I keep them shut, bleeding through my lids in a dull, pulsing red.
“Thirsty,” I whisper through parched lips, unsure if anyone’s there to answer me.
“Drink,” he says. “A sip.”
The water is cold. Soothing. Before he can pull away, I reach out and grab his sleeve. I force my eyes open. Carrson stands over me, his expression pulled into that familiar frown, but there’s another emotion there now, layered underneath the irritation. It takes me a second to recognize it.
Worry.
“Don’t go,” I whisper. There’s no strategy behind it. No plan. No angle. Only the quiet panic of being left alone. “Please.”
His jaw ticks, and I think he’ll say no, but instead he sets the glass down and gestures. “Scoot over.”
The mattress dips as he sits beside me, then shifts again as he stretches out, his back against the headboard. Dark wood, intricately carved, but I can’t focus on it.
He tips his head back and closes his eyes, a long, weary exhale leaving him. The shadows under his eyes stand out now, darker than usual. He looks exhausted.
Because of me?
I lean into him, drawn by the simple need for warmth, proximity, the solid presence of another person. My head touches his shoulder. He locks up. Every muscle tightens, like he can’t decide whether to shove me away or let it happen.
I know I should move, but I don’t have the strength and, honestly, I don’t want to.
“This is nice,” I mumble, half-delirious.
“Mmm,” he murmurs, noncommittal.
“Sorry if I get you sick,” I tell him, my head drooping.
“I never get sick.” He crosses one ankle over the other, his shorts riding up to expose the inside of his thigh. There are marks there. Not fresh, more like scars. Perfect circles. Lots of them as if something was done to him. Repeatedly.
I reach out and poke one. “What happened?”
Careful not to dislodge me, he tugs his shorts into place, covering the strange markings. “Nothing.”
I get ready to ask more, but the room spins as everything narrows, collapses.
***
The next time I wake, I can actually open my eyes. It’s nighttime now. That night…or another? I can’t tell. The room is dim, lit only by a small lamp on the nightstand, casting a weak yellow glow that pools across the bed and spills onto the floor.
Carrson is slumped in a chair beside me, his head tipped slightly back, his eyes hooded but not quite closed. Watching me.
The first thing I notice is that he isn’t wearing a shirt.
I don’t know why that’s what my brain latches onto, but it does. Seeing him that way in the clearing had been one thing, the open sky, the space around us making it distant, unreal. Here, in a bedroom, with the walls close and the air still, it’s different. There’s nowhere else to look. Only sculpted muscle and smooth skin.
