Then she led him to the bathroom.
She turned on the tap and waited for the temperature to settle before guiding his hands beneath the water. She picked up the soap and worked it into a lather and began to wash his hands—slowly, thoroughly, her fingers working between his with the same gentle focus she brought to everything she did.
He stood and let her.
The domesticity of it, the intimacy of it, undid him in ways that nothing else had.
"You don't have to—" he started.
"I know." She didn't look up from the task. "I want to."
He watched her face—the slight furrow of her brow, the way her lower lip pressed between her teeth when she concentrated. The unhurried tenderness of someone performing an act of care without needing it to be acknowledged.
"Thank you," she said quietly, still looking at their hands.
"For what?"
"Protecting me." She glanced up then, her eyes meeting his. "For taking it seriously from the beginning, even when no one else did. For believing me."
"Always," he said. The same word he'd given her before, wearing the same meaning.
She turned off the tap and reached for the towel.
He caught her wrist gently—the unbruised one—and waited until she looked at him.
"I should have done better," he said. "From the beginning. He should never have gotten close enough to frighten you. I should have ended it the moment you told me he made your skin crawl."
"You did end it."
"Later than I should have."
"You ended it." Her free hand came up to his jaw, her thumb tracing the line of it. "That's what matters."
He turned his face into her palm and pressed his lips there—not a kiss, exactly. Just contact. Just letting her feel that he was here, that she was, that this was real and safe and over.
"Stay with me tonight," she said. "Just—stay."
"I'm not going anywhere," he said. "I told you last night."
"Tell me again."
"I'm not going anywhere, Nimisha." His arms came around her, careful of her bruises, and pulled her against his chest. "I'm staying. Tonight. Tomorrow. Every night after that."
She exhaled slowly against his shirt.
"Okay," she said.
Just that. Okay.
He held her in the bathroom with the tap dripping and the evening light going dark outside and Bruno's claws clicking on the bedroom floor as he circled and settled, and thought:
He was going to say it soon.
The actual words.
He was going to stop being a coward and say them.
Soon.
