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“I’m sorry,” Sal said.
“That your little friends attempted to make me into an after-dinner sweet?”
“About your mother.”
The place inside me her care had tenderized now began to ache with a dull, hollow thump.
“I’m sorry about yours,” I said.
“I’ve no memory of being left on the Order’s doorstep,” she said. “That’s something, I suppose.”
“But I imagine you saw it happen to the young ones you cared for within the Order’s walls.”
Sal was silent a moment. “I did.”
“Some part of you, however young, remembers.”
The fingers coming through my hair slowed, resting on my shoulders. I lifted my hands from beneath the water and placed them over hers. “My apologies were for her.”
The contact sizzled through my nerve endings like lightning.
Our eyes met in the mirror’s reflection. An understanding was reached.
My hands fell away as hers slid over my collarbones. One remained pressed against my hammering heart as the other slid down my sternum to my quaking belly.
“You’re shivering,” she said. “We should get you out of here.”
I didn’t bother to tell her it had nothing to do with the water temperature as I used the tub’s edge to steady myself and push to my feet.
Sal came to me with the towels she’d been warming by the fire, wrapping one around my shoulders and another around my hair.
And then, ridiculously, I was crying again. Big fat tears slipped slowly down my face.
Sal paused, her dark brows pinching together in the center of her forehead. “Does your head still hurt?”
I shook my head, my wet hair brushing against my bare back.
“Then what?”
“I... I’m not used to having someone take care of me like this. It’s making me feel too many things, and I prefer not to feel things, so if you could maybe just stop doing that, I would be most appreciative.”
Her long lashes lowered a fraction as she studied me. “No,” she said.
Hugging the towel against me, I narrowed my streaming eyes at her. “What do you mean no?
“I mean, no. I’m not going to stop taking care of you.”
“But... why?” I asked.
“Because I like it.”
Not because I needed it.
Not because it was her duty.
Not because the law required it.
Not because she’d been paid to.
