No reply.
I knock on the bathroom door again, my muscles tightening the more the seconds tick by.
He said he wanted to take a quick shower, but it’s been over half an hour, and there’s no sign of him.
The muffled sound of the running water fills my ears, but the man himself isn’t replying.
Maybe I shouldn’t have let him go to the shower so soon after he woke up from that nightmare. Though I’m not sure if I would have been able to stop him from doing what he wanted.
He looked on the edge, his eyes glassy and his posture tight as he walked to the bathroom with lethargic movements.
“I’m coming in, Preston.”
I turn the knob, and I’m glad he didn’t lock the door. Though, even if he did, I’d smash it down.
The bathroom air is thick, saturated with steam and the metallic scent of running water, hot enough to make the mirror fog and the tiles sweat.
My bare feet step on the damp floor, instantly getting wet, and condensation glues my sweatpants and T-shirt tomy body. The shower is still blasting in a noisy cascade behind the translucent curtain, but Preston isn’t in it.
No.
Instead, he’s standing in front the mirror, which is half swiped right where his face is reflected. A white towel is haphazardly cinched around his hips, but the rest of his body is wet, glistening under the bright vanity light. A layer of tiny, perfectly formed water droplets clings to the sculpted contours of his chest and abs.
It coats the snake tattoo that looks impossibly alive right now. A riot of black-and-gray scales that nearly slithers out of the skin, shimmering wetly as it moves, its thick body looped all across his right side like a living, deadly sash.
Almost as if it’s strangling him to death.
I approach him slowly, but he doesn’t move.
Doesn’t make a sound.
Just stands there like a statue carved from ice. His skin is ghost-pale, his lips a stark, unsettling blue against the whiteness. Damp strands of blond hair plaster themselves to his forehead. His eyes, which are usually filled with restless fire, are completely dead, staring blankly past his own reflection, unfocused and vacant.
He’s disturbingly zoned out, held captive by whatever phantom he sees in the mirror.
My gaze drags down to his sternum, to the cracked ink, and something in me shifts. I’ve never liked this tattoo, always found it disturbing, but now, I think I know why.
This is a physical representation of something profound splintering inside him.
What, I don’t know. But I’ll find out.
A primal and fierce feeling tears through my bones. Aninexplicable gut-wrenching, intrinsic need to shield this fragile creature from the things that live inside his own skin.
And I shouldn’t want that. I shouldn’t give a fuck about Preston.
I’ve always been a goal-oriented person. Illogical feelings have no place in my modus operandi. I’m a planner, which means every decision and step I take has an outcome I calculate for. And that outcome needs to benefit either me or my mom—I don’t give a fuck about anyone else.
And yet as I stare at Preston’s emotionless face, I make the decision to protect him.
From himself, if need be.
And that doesn’t benefit me. At all.
Forget about using him to get closer to the inner workings of the four founding families. Forget about using him altogether.
Not sure when that goal gradually vanished, but it did, and I no longer care for it.
I got so close that I’m making it personal, so how the hell would I ever use him?
