Page 16 of The Rook’s Obsession

He wraps it around me himself, and then—slowly, carefully, the way he does everything when it comes to me—he starts drying me off. My shoulders first. Then my arms, his hands gentle over the scarred skin without lingering or looking away. Down my back. My hips, where his thumb traces the edge of the birthmark he mentioned earlier, and I feel the touch all through me.

I stand there and let him do it because I don’t know how to stop him. I could pull the towel away, shove him back, reassert some kind of control over a situation that I’ve lost control of completely.

But something keeps me still. Something I don’t want to name.

No one has ever done this for me. No one has ever dried me off like I was something worth taking care of. Vincenzo trained me to be self-sufficient. Independent. Hard. Tenderness was not part of the curriculum. You shower alone, you dress alone, you handle your own body and your own needs because relying on anyone else is weakness.

This doesn’t feel like weakness. I don’t know what it feels like. That’s the problem.

He wraps a second towel around my hair and steps back, giving me room. Then he grabs a towel for himself and dries off quickly, the way a man does when he wants to get something over with. I watch the muscles in his back move while he works, and I study the scars there, too. He has his own collection. A long, thin line across his left shoulder blade that looks like a knife wound. A puckered circle on his lower back that could be an old bullet graze. The fresh bandage on his thigh, spotted with pink where the wound seeped during the night, covered in a layer of extra medical tape.

We’re both maps of damage. At least we have that in common.

He pulls on pants and a shirt without looking at me, then disappears into the room. I hear him moving around out there. The clink of dishes. A knock on the door. Room service, maybe. Low voices in the hallway. The door closing again.

When I finally come out of the bathroom with the towel wrapped around me, breakfast is laid out on the small table by the window. Coffee, toast, eggs, fruit. And next to the food, folded neatly on the bed, is a set of clothes.

I pick them up and unfold them. A soft cotton blouse in a floral print. Pale green and cream. Light fabric, the kind that moves when you walk. A pair of fitted jeans. Simple white sneakers. Even underwear, still in the packaging. All of it in my size, which I’m not going to think too hard about right now.

“This is not my style,” I say flatly, holding up the blouse between two fingers like it’s evidence at a crime scene. It is a crime, as far as I’m concerned. The man has piss-poor taste in clothes.

Nick glances over from the table, where he’s pouring coffee. “It used to be.”

Oh, wonderful. This again. Rather than insult his ex-girlfriend’s hideous taste, I settle for, “It isn’t now.”

“Your other option is the clothes you came in last night, which are on the bathroom floor.” He takes a sip of coffee. “Your call.”

I look at the blouse again. The kind of thing a normal woman would wear to brunch or a farmer’s market or whatever the hell normal women do with their weekends. Not the kind of thing a woman who just killed a man on a rooftop last night would put on.

But he’s right. My clothes from last night are wrinkled, stale, and smell like a combination of sedative sweat and hotel carpet. I didn’t exactly pack an overnight bag before breaking into his room.

I drop the towel without a word, since modesty seems pointless at this juncture, and pull on the clothes. The fabric is softer than anything I’ve worn in years. Everything I own is black, tactical, and chosen for function. This blouse feels like a different language against my skin. It fits annoyingly well.

When I look at myself in the mirror hanging on the back of the closet door, I barely recognize the woman staring back. She looks... normal. Young. Like someone who has never held a rifle or a blade or the life of another human being in her hands.

She looks like a stranger.

I don’t like it. I don’t like what it implies about who he thinks I am. Who he wants me to be.

But I sit down at the table and eat breakfast anyway, because I’m starving, and my body needs fuel, and refusing food out of spite would be childish at best, stupid at worst. The coffee is mediocre; the eggs are passable, and the toast is toast. I eat without looking at him, focusing on the mechanics of chewing and swallowing. I most definitely do not think about the shower.

We eat in silence for a while. It’s almost domestic. The thought makes me want to throw my coffee cup at the wall.

He sips his own coffee before setting the cup down. “We’ll need to leave here by noon for the airstrip.”

And my blood runs cold, right on schedule. I grip my cup tight, but that’s nothing compared to my clenched jaw. “I told you. I’m not getting on a plane with you.”

Something about flying—the thought of being sealed inside a metal tube, thirty thousand feet above the ground, with no exits and no options—tightens my chest in a way I refuse to acknowledge. It’s not fear. I don’t do fear. It’s a rational aversion to a confined space from which there is no escape. That’s completely different.

Nick looks at me over the rim of his cup. “You’ll either walk onto that jet on your own two feet, or I’ll sedate you and carry you on. Either way, you’re coming with me.”

“That’s kidnapping.”

“You keep saying that.”

“Because it keeps being true.”

He sets down his cup. “Call it what you want. I made a promise, and I’m keeping it. Your brother is waiting for you. I’m bringing you home.”