Shortly after that water started spraying, and then the room began to heat up.
“Oh, wow,” I repeated. “Holy crap. Seven shower heads?”
“Eight.” He pointed to the rain head faucet in the ceiling that I hadn’t seen until now. “I don’t like that one. It’s too soft and seems like it falls directly over my face. If I step out of the way of it, I find myself stepping directly into the spray of that one.” He pointed at another faucet. “And then I get a mouthful of water for my troubles.”
I grinned. “I can see that.”
He pointed at a dial.
“This is how you turn the heat up and down. I have it at like one hundred and five, I think,” he said. “When you’re done, just press this button right here.”
He pointed at another button, and I nodded.
“Yell at me if you need me,” he offered.
I smiled.
Then he was gone, shutting the door softly behind him.
I swallowed hard and started to ease out of my shoes, followed shortly by my socks, pants, and t-shirt.
I looked at the articles of clothing on the floor—all clothes that Liner had scrounged up for me—and wondered how I’d gotten so lucky.
How had I been given this man?
How did I deserve for a man like him to mess with a girl like me? A girl that looked identical to a woman that had hurt his friend—badly.
I looked at myself in the mirror and wondered if I’d ever be able to escape Tara.
Tara, who had tortured me from a young age, and found pleasure in my pain.
Then there was Andy. Andy, who seemingly only got interested in me when Tara had done her worst, and he could make my torture complete by unleashing his own version of hell.
And my father, who watched his two children do what they wanted to do to a person of his own blood.
I didn’t see what Liner saw.
I saw a woman. A short woman with blah hair. She was too skinny. Her face looked like it could use some work—possibly a nose job thanks to Tara breaking it over and over again. She had sunken blue eyes, bags for days, and a sallow complexion that always looked like she needed about two weeks’ worth of uninterrupted sleep.
There were stress lines on top of stress lines, and there wasn’t a single smile line amongst them.
But as I got into the shower, rinsed off, and got out, wrapping myself into the plush robe that dragged on the ground due to my height limitations and Liner got his first good look at me wrapped in his clothing…he looked at me like he didn’t see the same woman that I did.
As if I wasn’t Theodora Threadgill, Tara Threadgill’s identical twin sister. No, he looked at me like I was just Theo. His Theo.
Someone that was deserving of his kindness.
And that made me feel things that I’d never felt in my life.
Things that I wasn’t sure that I should be feeling.
Especially since I was leaving in just a few short days, and he was helping me go.
But the fire that he’d started burned deep.
I wanted him…and I wasn’t sure I could talk myself out of doing what was slowly starting to swirl in my mind.Chapter 12Wade: If you had a shot for every time you thought about quitting, would you be sober or drunk?
Liner: I’d be dead.
-Text from Wade to Liner
Liner
I never expected it.
It came out of the blue.
One second, she was in her room, where she was supposed to be.
And the next she was in my room, crawling under my covers, and I was lost.
My eyes felt like they were peeled open and sandpaper was lining the lids, but I opened them anyway.
For her.
“What’s wrong, baby?” I asked softly, sitting up and rubbing my eyes with one fist, trying to clear my vision enough to see her.
The ‘baby’ had fallen from my lips so easily that it felt utterly natural. Like it was meant to be—her being my baby.
She didn’t stop to talk. Didn’t really say much of anything.
Instead, she continued to crawl until she was pressed up against me from shoulder to feet, and I couldn’t help my response.
I’d been fighting my body’s reaction to her the moment that I’d seen her at The Bridge.
Then she’d come into my home, and I’d had to control myself. I’d had to put my growing hunger for her on the back burner because she was so fragile.
Plus, I didn’t want to spook her away with my desire.
I didn’t want her to know what I felt in case she didn’t feel the same way.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” she whispered into the darkness, making me blink even more rapidly to clear my vision.
It didn’t help. My confusion at being woken so abruptly by her cleared, only to reveal that the room was dark and that the clock on the wall showed that it was just past three in the morning.