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“Jesus Christ…”
For the first time, I get a sense of myself, of what she might see there. My eye is crusted and bloodied, my hands stained. My hair feels matted against one side of my face. I glance down at my own hands, really noticing them for the first time. This whole time, it’s felt like I was outside of my body in a way, puppeteering it. I finally have a flash of self-awareness.
I am covered in a dead man’s blood, telling Kaydence that I’m okay.
“Go, Miss Lowry,” Salvatore says. It’s not a request.
Frankie guides Kay away, though she looks back at me until she reaches the top of the staircase and disappears. We are ripped away from each other a second time.
“Keep your eyes down,” Salvatore orders me. I don’t know why, but I’m in no mood to be rebellious. I follow him up the stairs, his arm around my shoulders, holding me close to him.
Without meaning to, I glance up to the foyer, trying to get a final glimpse of Kay—beyond the front door, several sheets are spread out over the shape of bodies. Red stains pool on the fabric.
I stop in my tracks.
It could be anyone under those sheets. My family. Sal’s.
I hear Salvatore curse softly. Suddenly, I am whisked into his arms.
“Tessa,” Salvatore says sharply, dragging my gaze back to look at him. “You look at me. Nothing else.”
I stare at him, nodding mutely. He carries me up the stairs, two at a time.
“Keep looking at me.”
I don’t know what I’m supposed to see. What ugliness could have happened up here, on our floor? But I stare at him and only him.
“Vinny—”
He hushes me, keeping my eyes trained on nothing but his face. We reach the threshold of his bathroom.
“Close your eyes.”
Salvatore sets me on the edge of the tub. I hear the water running to my left as he turns on the walk-in shower. My throat feels tight. In the dark, all I can see is Vinny.
“Can I look?” I ask, growing desperate.
“No.”
Salvatore eases me under the spray of the shower. He rubs his hands over mine. He checks under my nails and the inside of my ears. He lathers something in my hair. It finally dawns on me what Salvatore is protecting me from—my own reflection. My stomach twists. I open my eyes slowly. At our feet, the water swirls around the drain, soapy bubbles muddied red.
I gradually lift my eyes, trying to prove that I can stomach the sight.
There are worse things in my head than anything in this shower.
Until he picks a little piece of bone out of my matted hair.
My stomach lurches, throat tightening as I reel. I stumble away from him. The threat of vomiting heaves in my stomach, but I fight it down. For the first time since it happened, tears finally stream down my cheeks. The force of it all hits me at once. Salvatore grabs me and crushes me to him in his arms. I sob into his wet shirt, the both of us soaked, fully clothed, blood swirling around our feet.
He presses me to him like he is an anchor, and I am the little ship caught in the storm.
“He—”
I can barely speak, but it feels like I have to. I have to purge it somehow, or it’s going to keep building and building behind my eyelids.
“He was right there, and then he—”
“I know,” Salvatore mutters, his hands running through my hair.
