Page 25 of What We Burn

EIGHT

KNOX

“Lean forward,” I say, filling a jug with warm bathwater and lifting it to Fury’s hair.

She leans. I lift the jug, cup my free hand at her hairline so it doesn’t sheet down her face, and pour. Her hair darkens and the water runs down her spine, pooling in the dip at the small of her back.

She’s thinner than she was. I can see it in the new sharpness of her shoulders, in the bones standing up at the base of her neck where there used to be a softer line. She’s been eating but not enough. Soup, toast, the occasional spoonful of yogurt Micah coaxes into her. Her body’s running on survival rations and stubbornness.

The bath in Holden’s en suite isn’t anything special, but it’s deep enough that the water comes up to her ribs when she sinks down into it. At least I know she’s warm and doesn’t need to waste energy standing while I wash her hair.

She hasn’t done it properly since before the hospital—the nurses did what they could, but her hair is thick and it tangles if you look at it wrong.

I work shampoo into my palm and start at the crown. Temples. Down to the nape. My fingers are too big for this. I’m built for heavier things—weapons, tools, the collar of a man who’s earned my fist. Not the skull of a woman I could lift out of this water with one arm.

But I’m careful. I’ve always been careful with her.

She makes a sound. Small, involuntary. Her shoulders drop a fraction and her head tips back into my hands.

“Good?”

“Mm.” Her eyes are closed. “So good.”

“Tell me if your neck hurts.”

“It’s good, Knoxie.”

I smile at the name and keep working. Loosen the tangles with my fingers instead of dragging through them. There’s nowhere I need to be. My schedule for the foreseeable future is one item long: wherever Fury is.

I rinse the shampoo, reach for the conditioner. A bottle I bought this morning from the pharmacy. The clerk had blinked up at me from behind a display of lip balm while I held up three bottles that all looked the same and said, “Which one’s best for tangles?”

She’d recovered fast. Recommended a leave-in too.

Now the conditioner slides through her hair in a silky white ribbon, and I work it in section by section, patient. Methodical. Fury’s hands drift under the bathwater and she adjusts herself.

“You comfortable?” I ask.

She opens her eyes enough to look up at me. They’re heavy-lidded from heat and exhaustion, silver gone soft. “Mhm.”

“Water too hot?”

“No.”

I nod once and keep going, dragging my fingers through the ends of her hair again.

“Tilt your head back.”

She does. With her head back, her throat is exposed, and I can see the shape of it. The dark line under the dressing. The map of where the rope went.

My hands still.

There’s a box I keep things in. It’s in the back of my skull, behind the locked door where I put the things I can’t look at during daylight hours. The unit names are in there. The sound a body makes when it hits the ground from a height. The specific shade of red that arterial blood turns when it oxidizes in desert air.

Sage’s throat is in that box now.

The image of her hanging. The strain in Eli’s voice while he kneeled on the ground beside her. The sight of her intubated in that hospital bed. So damn small.

I lock the box. Shut the door.