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Would Kenz turn her back on me? She’d accepted what I did so far, but perhaps that understanding could only go so far. One time, when I returned, would she look at me differently? Would she flinch away from me?
I leaned my arm against the wall, hanging my head forward, letting the water strike the back of my neck and roll down my body. My mind felt as though it sparked, moving from one idea to the next but unable to make sense of any of it, and I couldn’t even track the passage of time.
“Tor?” The soft voice startled me, making me turn to find Kenz standing at the edge of the large shower. Her expression suggested it wasn’t the first time she’d called my name.
I said nothing, staring back at her, unsure what to do.
Her gaze moved over me, no doubt taking in the new marks I carried. Few jobs went through without at least a little damage. This one had left me a bruise on my side and a new cut on my arm. Nothing serious, but her careful gaze locked on each one.
“You were in here so long the water went cold.”
It had? I furrowed my brows as I realized for the first time that, yeah, the water coming from the shower head stung from the icy temperature. Still, I didn’t move to turn it off.
Kenz sighed and moved into the shower, reaching past me to twist the handle of the shower off. It got her arm wet, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Come on,” she said, grasping my wrist without hesitation. “Let’s get you in the bath so you warm up or you’re going to get sick.”
I didn’t fight her when she tugged me from the shower, then started the large standalone bath. It took me back to when she’d been on her period and I’d run a bath for her, when I’d sat with her in the room, having what might have been our first real conversation.
How things change.
When the water got high enough, she urged me over the edge of the tub, then into the water. It burned my skin, but I’d bet that had more to do with how cold my skin was from the shower rather than the bath being too hot.
I closed my eyes, unsure what to say, afraid to do anything to break the moment. It was like coaxing a small animal over, knowing that if I did a damn thing, it might get startled and take off.
Water splashed, and I opened my eyes when something touched me. Kenz got into the large tub, granting me only a glimpse of her bare skin before she sank into the water and bubbles along with me.
She sat across from me, causing me to sit up and cross my legs to make room.
Had I ever actually taken a bath with anyone? Not since being a kid, at least.
“You were supposed to wake me up,” she said, her voice quiet over the water still filling the tub.
She handed me one of the same types of crayons that we’d used in the bathroom before. It made me smile, that she’d thought about that.
She always did, though. Kenz never made me feel less than, as though my struggles with speech posed a burden on her even if I knew they had to. She accepted that limitation, accepted all of me.
It was late,I wrote.
“So? I’ve been waiting for you. I want to see you when you get home. I missed you.” She didn’t say that as though to scold me, to nag, but instead seemed to just want me to understand.
Still, I couldn’t quite let go of the worries that ran through my head.
Kenz sighed, then reached out and caught my wrist, much like she had before. She tugged softly, using her other hand to help steer me where she wanted me.
Which turned out to be against her, my back to her, a reversal of how we normally would sit. It felt strange, made me uneasy. Her body was smaller, and me sitting in front of her struck me as weird.
And I tried hard to ignore the sensation of her bare breasts against my back.
She grabbed a washcloth and gathered bubbles on it, then ran it along my arm, careful to avoid the newest cut. “You’ve been acting more distant whenever you get back from a job.” Her voice came out a whisper beside my ear.
I pressed my lips together, seeing no good reason to respond.
She moved to clean my other arm, the steady rhythm of her heart soothing. “I don’t like when you’re distant. It makes me feel lonely, like you’re slipping away from me. When you avoid me like this, it hurts.”
I flinched at her words. Of all the things she could have said, that was the worst, the last thing I’d have wanted. So I picked up the crayon from the ledge of the tub and wrote the words I hated having to write.
I don’t want you to see me afterward. It feels like you can see what I did, that you can see the blood on my hands. I’m afraid that one day, you’ll see that and walk away.
By the time I reached the end of the statement, my hand trembled. Having bad things happen was a fact of life, but somehow it felt worse when I caused it. So being the one to actually tell her this, to put those facts into her mind, it turned the general fear into a very specific terror. What if, by telling her this, she recognized it and agreed?
