I watch the water blast out of the faucet, bubbling into the tub. My throat aches.
Why did I waste so much time? Why wasn’t I ever brave enough to just put a few sentences out there? It might have saved us all so much pain. Esme and myself, at any rate. I left her alone when I should have tucked her right beside me. I should have taken a chance. Put the words out there. I could have lived with rejection. Honestly, I could have. So why didn’t I? I’ve always felt this great, big, overwhelming sense of all-encompassing love that I do now. We fit so perfectly together. We made sense. We were seamless.
I sway toward Esme. She catches me, her hands at my waist. I support myself too, leaning on my own strength. I’m far too heavy for her. “I’m sorry,” I rasp out. I screw my eyes shut tight. “Sorry for… for…” How can I even encompass it? How can I translate my deepest emotions from rivers of current and static and energy and force them into words? “Sorry for the way I am,” I finally choke. Lamely.
Esme makes a terrible sound in her throat, one that rings of pure despair. Her hand shoots up and tangles in my damp hair. She wraps her other arm around my back and hugs herself to me tightly. “No! No, I like the way you are.”
I can’t make myself stop. The words bubble to the surface like a flash flood. “I’m sorry that I never saw you or heard you properly. I’m so sorry that I left you alone. I’m sorry that I loved you, but I never knew how to do it properly. I had no fucking clue. I just… felt so much. I couldn’t stop. I was scared, but it was more. You deserved so much. Everything. And I was justme. I was so stupid and young and even when I wasn’t, I still couldn’t tell you. Was it too late? Is it too late?”
No. Fuck. I can’t ask that. I can’t.
“I’m even sorrier that this is happening right now. This is supposed to be our time. An escape from everything. This is all wrong and you shouldn’t have to come in here and pick my ass off the floor and clean up after me.”
She tsks under her breath. Her arms tighten around my waist, holding us together. She presses her cheek against my chest and starts swaying a little. She rocks us back and forth, my body following the motion of hers like the tide shifting sand. I’ve tried to be her rock, but now she feels like mine. She’s my anchor, keeping me here instead of letting me cut myself adrift. She’s so much smaller than me, but she’s my safe place.
We stand quietly, chests heaving with rough breaths. I don’t feel so alone in my silent agony with her shoulders rising and falling so near to my own and the heat of her body breaking through and washing over me.
She waits until I’m not so obviously wrecked before she loosens her hold and steps back, then turns off the waterbefore the tub overflows. She steps into the water, still fully clothed in sleep pajama shorts and a tank top and sinks down. Her hand floats out.
“Come on,” she coaxes.
Fuck. I didn’t know that she was going to do this. It’s a big tub. If I draw myself up and huddle near the back… of course I’ll still have to touch her. I’m so far out of my mind that desire is the last thing on it, but this is sointimate. We’ve been friends forever and there has been nothing in that friendship that looks like this.
She scoots to the back of the tub and folds herself up like I planned to do, leaving the rest of the space open.
“Wizard,” she urges, but gently. “Come on. It’s no different than sitting in a hot tub.”
My body reacts before my brain catches up. She’s like a magnet, she’s the tide, she’s the moon. All the elemental forces controlling my body down to a cellular level. I get in fully clothed and intend to beetle myself into the faucet at the far end, but my body has other plans. I step into the warm water, turn, and sit down. I give Esme my back. Unguarded. Half broken.
I’m so fucking stupid. So fucking fucked.
I shake again, fear and pain and all the questions I don’t have answers to locking into my joints. My stomach flips and I have to swallow convulsively to keep myself from being sick again.
Esme’s hand lands on my back and run down my shirt. She tries to tug me to her, but when I don’t budge, she envelops me. Her palms slip around to my chest, warm and comforting.
I can’t help it. I close my eyes and sway into her touch. She’s channeled some kind of storm from day one. She brought lightning into my life. She left me burned and blistered and scarred, and that’s no one’s fault but my own.
It doesn’t matter how big I am. Esme’s determined to get her arms around me. She kneels and envelopes me. I try not to groan as her breath fans out hot against the back of my neck. She rests her cheek on my shoulder. Eventually, her hands unclasp and she flattens her palm right over my heart. It tumbles and skips hopelessly. I’m very aware of the steady thrum of her heart beating furiously against my back.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” she finally says, voice coming out like she has a sore throat. “I’m the one who’s sorry. You’ve had so many bad nights and shitty days that you had to go through completely alone.”
“Not alone. I had friends. And then my brothers at the club.”
“You don’t tell them everything. Would you go to them with something like this? If you woke up sick in the night? When you don’t know what’s worse—the physical agony or the emotional turmoil, or when it all blends into one big miasma so bad that your body tries to twist itself up and wring itself dry.”
Esme’s words are water poured into the dusty vessel that I’ve become. I turn so I can see part of her face, and then of course I have to turn more, because I want to see itall. She’s beautiful, her lips tipped into a sad smile for me. Her face is soft, though. Vulnerable. Completely trusting. She holds me tighter, like she never wants to let go. Shockingly, she drops a kiss to the back of my neck.
“Wizard?”
“Hm?”
I don’t turn and after a moment, her hands leave me, her arms slip away, and the water sloshes in the tub as she stands. Her warmth bleeds out of me, even as hot water laps at my waist.
She kneels down at the side of the tub, in front of me. I reach for her blindly and she takes my hand in hers. Her eyes are so intense that I’m scalded down to my marrow. “There isnothingto forgive.” She leans in close, so close. Closer than we’ve been ever, except on those rare nights when she might have rested her head on my shoulder like a sister would have done because she felt protected and safe.
I jerk back when her finger lands on the bridge of my nose. She leaves it there and flows with me. She traces the length of it, then caresses my cheek with the pad of her thumb. “You’re beautiful, Neal. Has anyone ever told you that? Properly?”
A mirthless, half started laugh erupts from me. “Nope. Never.”
