Page 153

And sometimes because I just wanted to see his body.

There’s an ache in my chest that he remembers exactly how I like my own baths, watching him light the amber candle on the nearby stool, stepping out and clicking on the lights in the bedroom, so that they spill into the bathroom, turning off the big light so that it’s just soothing warm candle- and lamplight.

He stands then, pulling his shirt off and stepping up to start undressing me. Slow. Careful. I examine the bruising over his ribs and chest—it’s still rough, though the scabs have healed. He hasn’t complained about it, but tomorrow is his first game dealing with it, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous.

“Relax,” he says, watching me intently. As if my every thought is broadcasted to him constantly. “It doesn’t hurt. I’m fine.”

His fingers ghost up my sides as he pulls the tight athletic material from my body. A shiver racks my body, and he presses a gentle kiss against my collarbone as he ducks and pulls my leggings and socks down, letting me step out of them before he tosses them into the corner with his own shirt.

Then he grabs a clip, walks around my body, and pulls my hair up gently, the same way I’m sure he’s seen me do it a thousand times, before securing it up off my neck and therefore out of the water.

His joggers come off then, the tight black material of his boxer briefs distracting me enough that a noise pulls out of me accidentally.

“Easy, Lil,” he chides with a gentle smile, before nodding his head toward the water. “Go ahead and get in.”

I shake my head. We’ve never done this here before, and he’s nearly too big to fit in the tub.

“You should get in first.”

He’s fully naked now, and my mouth dries up.

He’s perfect. I’ve always been distracted by Toren’s body, taken by the beauty in his every muscle, every imperfection of his skin. The birthmark mole on his neck, hidden by ink now, though I’d be able to find it blind. The finger on his right hand that never healed right, the knuckle bigger than the rest. The lines of his well-defined chest and abdomen, though I felt the same when he was all soft flesh and sharp ribs—because his chest has always been somewhere I can rest my head and things feel better. Lighter.

Toren has spent our entire lives believing Van Gogh is my highest obsession, but it’s him. It’s always been him.

He licks his lips and smiles as he steps past me and into the water, settling slowly so he doesn’t slosh all the water out. For a moment, I just look at him. At the tattoos he inked on his body for me. At the lily flowers that he inked on his body for him.

And then I’m tripping forward, drawn to him like a magnet. I settle over him, straddling the smallest point of his waist, body warm from the water and his skin.

He washes my body first, and I wash him at the same time. Jeff Buckley’s cover of “Hallelujah” plays faintly, almost distantly from his phone on the vanity top where he must’ve started it before we got in. He hums low, soft, and his fingers make chord shapes on my spine every now and then. I miss hearing him play it.

“Talk to me, Lil,” he says, whisper-quiet. I feel almost drunk on the scent of him, of the bathwater, the candlelit vignette he’s created. Like softening me, until I’m less restless.

Creating my safe space for me.

“It wasn’t on purpose,” I say quietly. My hands are planted across his chest, fingers tracing the swirls and patterns I know better than my own body. “And it wasn’t like what he said.”

Toren presses a kiss to my temple. We’re so close like this. Part of me wants to ask if he can be inside of me now. Not sexually, really, but just to feel warm. Closer to him—even knowing that sometimes still doesn’t feel close enough.

“After I flunked out of Harvard, things were bad.” I shrug. “I guess things were already bad, but I was still painting at home, when I could. And then . . . I don’t know what happened. Everything just started to feel . . . wrong. Like there was a constant weight on my chest, in my throat, that made me want to cry?”

His fingers take turns pressing and massaging at my back muscles as I sink farther down, relaxing into the massive span of his body.

“Dad tried to put me in online classes. Then he wanted me to get a job. And I just . . . I couldn’t manage either. Sometimes I felt like I couldn’t even move off the bed to turn on my laptop, let alone attend a video classroom meeting.

“I got fired from the job Dad found for me, and it was easy for him to blame the painting, I think, because it was the only thing I seemed able to do. I didn’t leave my bedroom sometimes for days, which only made the inevitable crash worse.”

“Sometimes I forgot to eat. Or I’d look at the clock and it would be ten hours later and not two. But it was the only time I felt even somewhat myself.

“So he took everything. I came home one day and all my stuff was gone. He wanted me to ‘grow up’ and so he’d made sure of it. Made me start attending events with him and Carson. Lunches. Teas with a bunch of women who looked at me if I used the wrong fork.”

Looking back, it made everything worse. There were parts of me that looked forward to new things, outside of the house, but every expectation of fun or a moment of friendship wasn’t real. It was like playing this constant elaborate game everyone else had the rules to that I didn’t understand.

“And then . . . I was just . . .”

My stomach turns.

“I’m not going anywhere. You know that. Talk to me, baby.” Toren presses another kiss to my jaw, before tilting my chin up. “Just what, Lil?”