Her gasp nearly sucked all the oxygen from the room. “Absolutely not.”
I cracked a smile. “It’s just hair. It’ll grow back.”
She reached up and raked her fingers from the front of my scalp down to the nape of my neck. I closed my eyes and groanedas the skittering goosebumps eased some of the tension in my muscles.
“I like your hair,” she quietly admitted as she twined her arms around my neck and looped strands of my hair around her fingers.
I licked my lips as I studied the slope and curve of her mouth. “Will you buzz it for me? Please?”
Her hands moved from my neck to my temples. I leaned into her left palm and closed my eyes.
I was exhausted.
Years of running from myself turned to chasing purpose in all the wrong places. That turned into me working for Valentine, then running from him too.
But with her . . .
“You’re the most peace I’ve had in years,” I confessed. “I’m never able to sleep more than a little bit at a time. But you give me a place to rest.”
Amelia eased up onto her toes, held my head in her hands, and kissed me. “I’ll shave your head if you’ll sleep in the bed with me tonight.”
With the exception of a few nights where we fell asleep by accident, I hadn’t slept in the bed with her. Even though we’d had sex, I always slept on the couch. Some nights, I would hold her until she fell asleep, then I’d ease off the mattress and go back to the couch.
She never brought it up. I justified it in my mind, saying that it was practical. I’d have to get up and make my rounds. I didn’t want to wake her.
But that wasn’t it at all.
I loved her, and I was terrified of it.
But as much as I was scared of her, she wasn’t scared of me. Never had been. That’s what was most terrifying of all. She saw me. Truly saw me.
Not sleeping beside her in bed upheld one of the few remaining boundaries between us.
“Okay,” I agreed with a solemn nod.
The cabin was sparsely furnished, which didn’t give us many options for a makeshift salon. I resorted to sitting on the floor with a towel around my shoulders like a cape while Amelia stood behind me with the clippers.
She was silent as she adjusted the guard setting and turned them on. I closed my eyes, losing myself in the hypnotic buzz as she began to cut my hair. The tender, methodical motions of her hand smoothing down each pass to brush away the long strands was more potent than any sedative. Being touched so tenderly was more intimate than sex.
“All done.”
I hadn’t even realized the clippers were off. Amelia carefully pulled the towel from my shoulders so cut hair wouldn’t get all over me.
“Want to go check it in the mirror?”
I was in a daze as I made my way to the bathroom. Was this what Amelia had felt like when I knocked her out with chloroform?
The person staring back at me in the mirror wasn’t the man I was today. It was the boy who had buzzed his head long ago to go to boot camp.
I’d always wanted to become the man that younger me would have idolized.
I had become a man, but not one I was proud of.
“I guess there’s no time like the present,” Amelia said as she carried the boxes of hair dye over and lingered in the doorframe. “How’d I do?”
I swallowed and smoothed my hand over the short cut. “Looks good. Thank you.”
She read through the instructions on the box again. “I’ve never dyed my hair. Who knows—I might end up with a buzz cut too.”
