The bathroom was warm and filled with steam. Candles on the counter that I didn’t know we owned. The water was hot and scented with something that smelled like lavender and cedar, which was an oddly specific combination for a man who claimed he didn’t know how baths worked.
He undressed me slowly. Carefully. Button by button. Fabric slipping off my shoulders and pooling at my feet. He kissed the places where the clothes had been, my shoulders, the curve of my neck, the spot behind my ear that made my breath catch. Then he helped me into the water and climbed in behind me and pulled me back against his chest.
We sat there, his arms around me, the hot water easing muscles I didn’t know were tight, his chin resting on top of my head, the candles throwing warm light across the tiles.
“You’re tense,” he said. His hands found my shoulders and started working the knots out with firm, deliberate pressure.
“I left my husband and flew across the country on a whim because I thought he was in love with his ex. I think I’ve earned some tension.”
His hands paused. “I’m sorry you went through that.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t ask you first.”
“You shouldn’t have had to ask. I should have told you about Seraphina before I met her.”
“Yes. You should have.”
“I’m working on communication.”
“You’re a man. It’s a lifelong project.”
He laughed against my hair, low and warm, the vibration moving through the water between us. His hands resumed on my shoulders, working down my back, thumbs pressing into the muscles along my spine. I leaned forward to give him better access, and his mouth found the back of my neck. The combination of his hands, his lips, and the hot water made my eyes close, a sound leaving me that was dangerously close to a moan.
“Careful,” I said. “I’m still sore from the other night.”
“I know.” His hands moved lower, working my lower back with a tenderness that was more about care than anything else. “That’s why we’re in a bath and not in bed.”
I leaned back against him. His arms wrapped around my waist. His heartbeat was steady against my spine, and the water lapped gently at our skin and I thought: this is what it feels like to be taken care of by someone who actually knows how.
We stayed until the water cooled. He wrapped me in a towel that was warm from the heated rack, carried me to bed, and lay beside me with his arm across my waist and his face in my hair. I was asleep in minutes. He was still holding me when I woke up.
Some days when Christopher came home from the office, he walked through the front door, found me in the kitchen, and didn’t say a word. He just crossed the room, wrapped his arms around me from behind, pressed his face into my hair, and held on. Sometimes for ten seconds. Sometimes for a full minute. I’d stand there with a wooden spoon in one hand, his arms around my waist, the warmth of his chest against my back, and let him hold on for as long as he needed.
One evening, we were on the couch, my legs draped across his lap, a movie playing on the screen that neither of us waswatching. His hand rested on my ankle, thumb moving in the same absent circles he always traced on my skin, like his body couldn’t be near mine without touching it.
“I need to tell you something,” he said.
I looked at him. His eyes were on the screen but he wasn’t seeing it.
“The closet,” he said. “You saw me in the closet.”
“I did.”
“I sleep there sometimes. Not every night. Just when the nightmares come.” His thumb stopped moving on my ankle. “It started when I was a child. My father’s house. The room he put me in was at the end of the hall, away from everyone. Too open. Too many shadows. I’d crawl into the closet with a blanket and close the door and the walls would be close enough to touch and nobody could find me there.”
He swallowed. “I’m thirty years old and I still can’t sleep in a bed when the bad nights hit. I go to the closet, lie on the floor, feel the walls, and then I feel like I can breathe.”
He said it without looking at me. Eye contact during vulnerability was something he hadn’t learned yet.
I shifted on the couch, moved closer, took his hand and held it with both of mine against my chest.
“Is it weird?” he asked, quietly, like the answer mattered more than he wanted it to.
“Normal is overrated,” I said. “And anyone who tells you how you’re supposed to cope with what happened to you as a kid can go straight to hell.”
He looked at me then. Whatever he saw in my face must have been enough, because he pulled me into his lap and held me against his chest, his arms tight, his breathing uneven. I held him back, and neither of us said anything else because sometimes the truest conversations happen without words.
That week, Christopher did something I didn’t expect.
