“I have been informed I am not one.”
“Try anyway.”
I looked at him, at the stubborn line of his mouth and the lingering wetness in his eyes he would never admit to, and felt a yearning so strong that it physically hurt me to not take him into my arms.
“Okay.”
“Good,” Cove muttered.
And for the next twenty minutes, while Cove explained the adjustment he wanted made and why Ben was undeserving of caring forhisanimals, I stood beside him, desire moving under my skin like a new and dangerous current, and listened as though listening might become, if done perfectly enough, a form of repentance.
20
Cove
The worst part was not that Tobias looked at me like he was telling the truth about me being precious to him.
The worst part was that, sometimes, after days of concrete walls and silence and the terrible gentleness of his hands, some lonely, damaged part of me wanted to know what it would feel like to believe him.
I hated that.
I hated it more than the room, more than the cuff, more than the way he knocked so politely before unlocking a door he had no intention of letting me keep closed. At least those things made sense. They were ugly, but they were honest in their ugliness.
This was worse because it was not honest.
Or maybe it was too honest, I didn’t know.
Something that Ididknow was that I was still angry.
I was so angry I could feel it sitting inside my ribs like something with claws, waiting for any excuse to rake itself up my throat and use my voice as a weapon to attack. I was angry when Tobias brought breakfast, and when he checked my body to ensure the bruises and scrapes were healing. I was angry when he uncuffed me outside the bathroom and stood with his back to the wall while I showered with the door cracked open, both of us pretending that the thin line of visible tile and steam between us was some meaningful form of privacy.
And I was angrier still when he respected it.
Which was unfair.
I knew that was unfair.
I also did not care.
If he looked, then he was a monster. If he did not look, then he was proving he could respect boundaries when he wanted to, which meant every boundary he ignored was a choice.
There was no way for him to win that argument.
Good.
He didn’t deserve to win.
Still, the shower had become one of the strange little pressure points of my day. Not because I was grateful for it, even though I was. Not because the office bathroom was beautiful and clean and private enough to make me feel human again for twenty minutes. But because when I stepped out afterward, hair wet and skin warm and flushed, he always looked at the floor first.
Always.
Like he had trained himself not to look until I told him he could.
Like he knew his wanting had become another form of danger.
That morning, I found him standing, facing the monitors, his hands tightly clasped behind his back and his posture rigidenough that I knew he had heard me step out but was refusing to turn.
The door to the bathroom was still half-open behind me, steam drifting into the office in pale, humid curls. My hair dripped onto the collar of the soft black shirt he’d brought me to change into.
