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My heart shattered every time I thought about Zane having gone through it once before. And then it shattered into even smaller pieces when I remembered the look of fear on Haina’s face as she stood on the shore, watching us pace the deck of the boat like rabid wolves.
“Go first,” Zane grunted, lifting his chin at me, then jerking his head toward the bathroom.
“No, you,” I said with a headshake. “You took care of us.”
“And I will continue to. Go.” His tone conveyed that his word was law and he wouldn’t be argued with.
Every syllable tore a fresh wound in my throat, so I didn’t argue and just nodded, heading to the bathroom. We would burn these clothes and every linen in the boat, too.
I stripped and climbed into the hot bathtub. Using some of the lavender soap that we pilfered from the last place, I lathered up my hands and sat down, rubbing the soap and bubbles all over the scabbed-over bloody tracks that marred my arms and legs. I glimpsed my face in the chrome faucet and had to turn away in disgust.
How was Haina going to see past this? See past the scratches, scabs and scars? I’d tried to claw out my own eyeballs, and my face paid the price. The water and soap stung as I ran my hands and the lather over all the scrapes, but it felt good to get clean.
How she’d managed to hug us and not gag or start vomiting from the smell, I had no idea. It wasn’t like we pissed or shat ourselves. The beast shuts down all other bodily functions besides thirst when going through withdrawal. Then we sweat out all the water that we drank. It was sweat—detox and stress sweat—that we reeked like. Combined with just not bathing for nearly a week.
I scrubbed my hair, then sank backward into the warm water until I submerged my face and the sounds of the cabin disappeared into nothing more than muffled echoes.
The tub was too small for my brothers or me, and my knees protruded out while my top half was under. I held my breath just a fraction longer than I should have, until my lungs burned, then with a sharp gasp, I sat up, wiping my hands down my wet face.
“We survived detox, and now you’re trying to kill yourself?” Rix asked from behind me, causing me to jerk a glance over my shoulder. He must have opened the door when I was under water, and because I was but a mere mortal now, I hadn’t heard him enter or felt his heartbeat.
“Just drowning out the world,” I murmured, my throat burning with every word.
“I get that.” He had a large pot of steaming water. “Drain that filthy soup. It’s my turn.”
I nodded and reached for the towel, pulling out the plug, standing up and stepping over the edge of the tub. Once the tub was empty and he ran some cold water to clear the basin of my grime and bubbles, Rix put the plug back in and dumped in his water.
Zane joined us in the small bathroom and dumped another pot, not saying a word before he turned around and left.
“How long have I been in here?” I asked Rix.
“Half an hour.”
“She back yet?”
“No.” His head dipped, and his shoulders slumped. “I hate that I can’t feel her anymore. Can’t sense her.”
I squeezed his shoulder, feeling the loss of muscle mass. I was probably the same. We needed to eat. Fatten ourselves up like bears. Maybe we needed to kill a bear and just eat its fat for a few weeks? “Even if we were still enhanced, she’s probably walked too far away for us to sense her anyway.”
He flicked his brown eyes at me. “I’m worried she’s not going to come back. That look she gave us…” A haunted expression creased his face. We’d all aged significantly during our time on the boat. New lines etched our foreheads and around our eyes. I wasn’t old, by any means, only twenty-four, but I felt like I’d lived five lifetimes in a little over five days. My body was begging me to rest.
“She’ll come back,” I said, my words sounding as unconvinced as I felt.
Rix returned to the kitchen, not saying anything else.
I found fresh clothes in the bedroom and pulled them on, forgoing any boxers because underwear wasn’t a priority and I had no idea whose was whose, between me and my brothers.
Rix bathed, then Zane. I knew that more than an hour had passed by the time we were all clean and our bellies were full, but Haina still hadn’t come back.
“Should we go look for her?” Rix asked, cringing, then taking a sip of the mint tea he’d brewed himself to ease his throat.
Zane shook his head. “No. If she sees us, she might think we stalked her, went after her for the wrong reasons.”
“We need to show her how much we care about her,” I said. “Remind her that we’re not the beasts she saw on that boat.”
“But how?” Rix asked. “There isn’t exactly a florist down the road or a store where we can go buy chocolates.”
I grinned at him as I wandered into the kitchen from where I’d been sitting in the chair by the window and the stuffed raccoon that still had a blanket over it. Grabbing the coconut oil from the counter, I held it up and waggled my eyebrows. “By doing what we do best.”
