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“Anything you want, Solnyshka.” Malice’s gray eyes burn with intensity. “Just let us know.”
I smile a little, touched by their concern. They all look so anxious in their need to make sure I’m alright, and I know it’s because of how much they care for me.
“A shower would be good,” I murmur. “I want to feel clean. And then maybe some food.”
In truth, I’m not hungry at all, but I know I should eat. Even though I’m too numb to really register it now, my body is undernourished from the time spent in captivity.
“There’s soap and shampoo and shit in the bathroom,” Malice tells me. “I’ll grab some food and be back by the time you’re done.”
I just nod, flashing them all a weary, grateful smile before making my way into the bathroom.
It’s small and cramped, nothing special at all, but at least I know it’s safe. I strip out of Malice’s jacket, letting it fall to the floor while the water heats up in the shower.
Once it’s just above tepid, I step in and start washing up, wanting to cleanse my skin everywhere that Troy touched me. I close my eyes, trying to relax, trying to breathe, but I still feel weird.Wrong.
The door opens after another minute, and I peek around the shower curtain to see Ransom stepping inside, closing the bathroom door behind him.
“Just me,” he says with a smile, holding his hands up. “I just didn’t want you to be alone. Is it okay if I stay?”
I nod, and he smiles wider. He strips down, tugging his shirt over his head to reveal his cut torso and the tattoos snaking over his skin. Then he reaches for his pants, watching me for any signal that he should stop. I nod again, swallowing, and he shoves them down, baring his pierced cock and muscled thighs. He kicks his shoes off along with his pants and then steps into the shower to join me, pulling the curtain back in to place and moving in behind me.
At first, he doesn’t touch me, just watching as the water runs down my skin. I gaze at him too, drinking in the sight of his handsome face, his eyebrow piercing, and the brown hair with highlights of copper strands that darken as the water soaks into them.
“Fuck,” he murmurs finally. “You have no idea how good it is to see you. Not even like this—I don’t mean just because you’re naked. I just… missed you, angel.”
“I missed you too,” I whisper back. “All of you.”
“We were all going a little insane without you,” he admits with a crooked grin. It doesn’t reach his eyes, which turn a little haunted as he speaks. “Malice was… well, you know,Malice. And Vic barely left his computer to take a shit and sleep. None of us could function beyond what we needed to do to get you back. Because we need you. You keep us together.”
I can picture it easily, the way Malice would have been on the edge of losing his shit, angry and intense, and Vic’s single-minded focus.
“But you were together before you even met me,” I point out, tilting my head to let the water from the shower hit me at a different angle.
Ransom shrugs. “We were, but it’s hard to imagine it now. I don’t think any of us could ever go back to the way things were before we met you, even if we would’ve said things were good back then. That’s just because we didn’t know how perfect they could be. You’ve changed us a lot. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Warmth blooms in my chest. I smile a little, happy to hear that. I hate that they were so worried about me, but it feels good to know that while I was holding on to memories of them to keep me from losing myself to my fear and pain in Troy’s hold, they were holding on to me as well.
I want to tell him that. That I thought about them every day. That I pictured their pep talks, their strength, their resilience, and that it kept me sane in a way that nothing else would have. But the words won’t come. I don’t want to talk about the pain I endured in that house with Troy, and even thinking about it makes my head throb.
Ransom seems to sense that there’s some war going on inside me, or else it’s showing on my face pretty clearly, because he just smiles and moves closer.
“We’re together now,” he murmurs. “All of us. And everything will get better, I promise. One step at a time, you know?”
I nod because he’s right. “Okay.”
“Let me take care of you, okay? Let me help.”
I nod again, and Ransom reaches for the little bottle of shampoo on the shelf in the shower. He lathers up his hands, filling the shower with the scent of generic shampoo, and then starts washing my hair gently. The dyed brown locks are a mess of tangles and knots from it being damp when I fought with Troy, but Ransom’s fingers are soothing as he works the knots free and lathers my hair up.
He talks softly about nothing really, just filling the silence as he muses about what Malice might get for dinner, running down a list of the restaurants nearby, and how they’ve tried takeout from most of them. He talks about how Vic supposedly hates onions, but how he definitely ate some on a cowboy burger while he was deep in concentration trying to track me down.
It feels domestic and soft and safe, and I try to let myself sink into it, focusing on the good things here and blocking out the bad. The roar of the shower, the feeling of Ransom’s sure fingers in my hair, the trickle of suds and water down my back as he tips my head back to rinse my hair clean.
He keeps water and shampoo from getting in my eyes, and then smiles when he straightens me back up. Without making me ask him to keep going, he grabs the body wash and lathers up a wash cloth, then starts to clean me up. He lifts my arms, carefully scrubbing at every inch of my skin, and when he moves over my torso, I gasp softly as the cloth brushes across my chest.
Ransom grins, stepping a bit closer to me in the confines of the old bathtub. He fits a hand behind my head and tilts my head up a bit, then drops his own head. His mouth is just an inch away from mine, leaving me to close the distance if I want to.
And I do.
