Page 107

“Hawk hates Christmas,” I rush out.

He rubs his jaw. “Is that supposed to be an epiphany?”

“I think so?”

He looks at me with kind eyes. “Come here,” he says, turning on the water in the bathtub. He places a stack of towels on the ground for me to sit on and drapes the second robe over the ledge for me to lean against. Nathan’s going to wash my hair? I’m not mentally prepared for Nathan Lambros to wash my hair. Again.

I sit on the stack of towels and Nathan gently guides my head back against the tub. He sits on the opposite edge, the legs of his sweatpants rolled up, and directs the stream of water over my hair.

He squeezes shampoo across my hairline and combs it down with his fingers, every nerve on my body buzzing as he makes his way across my scalp. This feels so comforting after such a cold day. Nathan tosses in comments like “Wow, your hair is really crunchy” and “We might genuinely need a full hour” while we wait for the hardened gel to soften. I really try to enjoy the next few minutes while also trying to recall more from last year.

“Hawk’s already one of our suspects,” he reminds me.

“Oh. Yeah.” I look back at him. “I usually have better shower breakthroughs than that, I swear.”

“You weren’t supposed to be having breakthroughs,” Nathan says with a laugh. “You were supposed to be relaxing.”

“I don’t know why it felt important,” I say. “Or why I had forgotten that earlier.”

“It might have something to do with the fact that you were shot?” Nathan asks. “That’s traumatic.”

Leaning back like this, it looks like Nathan’s eyes are on the bottom half of his face. “I was fine then, I’m fine now.” Wasn’t I? Aren’t I?

“Your memories might be coming back in fragments,” he says. “What happened to you, it was a lot. But your body remembers.”

Oh, my body remembers all right. It remembers how risky it is, Nathan taking care of me like this. Last year, after he changed my bandages, washed my hair, and made sure I was fed, the biggest risk of long-lasting damage wasn’t to my shoulder. It was to my heart. He didn’t leave my side the entire time.

Until he did. The recollection gives my heart a little pinch.

As Nathan finishes washing out the shampoo with hot water, I say, “Oh, and no conditioner. I—”

“Don’t like the way it weighs down your hair,” he says, the corner of his mouth turned upward. “I remember.”

As I adjust myself on the stack of towels, my robe slips down. Nathan’s eyes flick over to where my skin is exposed.

His fingers go still in my hair. “Your shoulder.” He reaches forward, tracing my scar with his thumb. It sends tingles all the way down my arm.

“And it’s shaped like a candy cane,” I mumble. “The universe has a sick sense of humor, huh?”

I look away from my shoulder. It’s a reminder of the point when everything started to fall apart. Bijoux shooting me. Losing Nathan. My informant getting away. The Santa Claus Con.

“Getting in that boat was careless,” I say.

“Probably. But if you didn’t do that, Bijoux would’ve escaped.”

“Maybe we should’ve let her. Maybe then we wouldn’t be chasing a Sadistic Santa all over the city. I always thought my intuition was good, but I think I’ve just been too hasty.” I pull my robe up. “My gut has too much to say. It can’t even handle dairy. How helpful can it really be, you know?” I ramble. I’m nervous. If history has taught me anything, I know now just how fragile of a moment this really is. How easily breakable it is when our insecurities take over.

“Scarlett, about last year… I’m sorry I left the way I did,” Nathan says, his mouth a flat line. “I never should’ve left you in Hawaii. This is my fault. You opened up to me—hell, we opened up to each other—and then I disappeared. I don’t know what your intuition told you about me, but last year, it must’ve been pretty good for us to have the days we did.”

He turns off the water and wraps my hair in a towel. I sit up and climb onto the tub’s ledge to face him.

Nathan had told me he loved me. Or at least I think he did. Sometimes I still think I dreamed it up. And in my dreams, I said the words right back. I had fallen asleep in his arms and woken up to a Hawaiian barbecue dinner later that night. I would’ve said the words out loud, but he didn’t say them again, and at that point, I didn’t know what was reality and what was imagined.

We had four beautiful days. Ninety-six hours were spent together in that hospital room where we exchanged truths. And then he left.

Of course, by now I know what happened, why he wasn’t there. Why he had to go.

“I didn’t want to leave,” he says. “I hope you can believe that.”