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So much trust. So much it makes me dizzy.
Over in the silent kitchen, I scrub my face and sigh. The tiredness of several weeks on the road was already making my days woozy, but now with Resa here, everything feels dreamlike and off-kilter. What is real? What does she want? What can we do that she won’t regret?
Tugging the first aid kit off its shelf, I walk back to my own room like a man walking to the gallows.
Need to trust myself, but I’m hanging by a thread.
“Resa.” Her eyes flick open—she’s not sleeping, then. Just lying flat on my bed, soft breaths stirring the air, her face slackwith fatigue. I’m not the only one having a long, weird day. “I’m going to take your shoes off, okay?”
“Mm.”
Her right foot lifts up in offering. Placing the first aid kit on the bed, I kneel on the floor and tease her laces loose. The sneaker comes off easily, but Resa tenses up with a hiss when her sock sticks to her new blisters.
“Sorry.” A whole sad, bloodied pile of socks and shoes grows next to my knee as I strip her left foot too. Bare toes wriggle in the air, and I can’t resist catching her ankles in my hands. Can’t resist rubbing those ankle bones with the pads of my thumbs, feeling the delicate structure of her. The architecture beneath her satin skin.
Resa makes a small sound in the back of her throat. Her bare ankles are so warm and delicate under my hands.
“I’m going to clean and bandage your feet. It might sting a bit.”
“Okay.”
Simple as that:okay.I’m going to cause her pain, and that’s okay. I’ve carried her to my bed and that’s okay. I’m asking her to trust me, and it’s A-okay.
Frustration chokes me, even as I spread the first aid supplies out on the mattress in easy reach: antiseptic wipes, numbing cream, and a selection of different-sized band aids.
Resa shouldn’t trust so easily. What if I were a bad man?
Hell, what if Iama bad man? What if having her here, exactly where I want her, soothing the emptiness in my chest… breaks something inside me? What if I never let her leave after all?
“Have you told anyone you’re here?” I ask mildly.
Resa hums and shakes her head, then wriggles her backpack off. She digs for her phone, the screen lighting up so it reflects two rectangles in her eyes, and taps out a message.
“I’ve got no signal right now,” she says. Trust, too much trust. “But I’ve told the girls where I am. It’ll send in the morning. No one will worry about me in the meantime, Beckett, it’s fine.”
That isnotfine. That is the opposite of fine.
Resa’s breath hitches when I dab at the first blister with an antiseptic wipe—and I’m going as gently as I can, but I can’t help the sting.
“Distract me,” Resa whispers when I move onto the second. Her poor feet are battered and raw, and this discomfort will last for a while yet, so if I can help with that, I will. “Tell me a secret.”
My mouth twitches as I tease open another band-aid. “A secret? I don’t have many of those.”
It sounds like a line, but I really don’t. Because sure, I have things I don’t tell people, but it’s not because they’re a capital S-Secret. It’s because I’m not that close to anyone back in London. Or anywhere, for that matter.
But for Resa, I’ll make the effort. “Help me out here. What would you like to know?”
Propping up on her elbows, she bites her lip and stares down at me over the hills and valleys of her perfect body. “Um—okay. Did you have any pets growing up?”
A smile bursts over my face, even as I watch my hands working. “Ah, yes. Top secret stuff.”
“Says the man dodging the question.”
Ha. Fine.
“We had cats in my house.” Another packet tears open. “My parents were away a lot, and they didn’t want the responsibility of a dog. They didn’t particularly want the responsibility of a child, either.”
That last bit slips out, unguarded, and I stiffen once I hear my own words—but Resa simply nods, encouraging me to go on. There’s no pity in her eyes—just compassion and curiosity.
