Too many.
Because it now seemed so clear to me that it didn’t matter. I was a mixture of both, and I was also neither of them.
I also looked like I hadn’t slept in a week.
Maybe a month.
Pulling away from the mirror, I turned on the shower, and within moments, lovely warm steam was building. I peeled off the remaining clothes and stepped inside the stall, biting back a moan when the water hit my skin. Muscles I didn’t even know I had screamed in relief as I turned around, letting the stream wash over me. I looked down at my feet, and a puff of air parted my lips.
Pinkish water ran between my toes, circling the drain. Blood. Mom’s blood.
Smacking my hands over my face, I squeezed my eyes shut and pressed my lips together, holding my breath.
Mom.
Disbelief rippled through me, that part of my brain that still couldn’t believe she was gone. It had only been sixteen or so hours since I’d last talked to her.
Sixteen hours. Maybe a little more, but just hours ago, she’d been alive …
Now she was gone.
And I was now gone, wasn’t I?
Tiny white lights were forming behind my lids. A burn started in my lungs.
Were people looking for me right now? Did they leave Mom there to be found by police? The commotion had to have been reported. Had anyone found my mother and begun to ask questions? Was I a missing person, assumed … dead? Or did the public not even know what happened? Maybe we’d been erased.
My head began to swim, and my body began to feel shattered.
A tremble shook my arms and then my legs. I started to double over but caught myself. Yanking my hands away from my face, I opened my eyes and mouth, dragging in deep gulps of air, so deep that I choked and then heaved. Throwing out an arm, I slammed my hand on the tile wall and steadied myself.
Pull it together. That’s what I needed to do. Pull it together. I could do this. I had to do this.
So I did.
I opened my eyes and straightened, removed my hand from the tile—the cracked tile. My head tilted to the side as I looked between it and my palm. Had I done that? Or had it been cracked before?
Unease slithered through me as I lifted my face to the pounding water, but I forced my mind blank, and then I stitched every broken part back together. I washed my hair twice, scrubbed my body down twice with the wonderful woodsy-scented body wash that I was sure belonged to a dude. I even scrubbed the bottoms of my feet and between my toes. By the time I finished with my shower, my body was pink from all the scrubbing, and I thought I had pulled it together.
I grabbed one of the big, fluffy towels and wrapped it around me, cinching the two halves above my breasts. Finding a comb, I got down to working out all the ridiculous tangles while staring at my feet, because avoiding the mirror felt like it would be counterproductive to keeping it together.
Satisfied with my hair, I opened the bathroom door, stepped out, and immediately came face to chest—a well-sculpted, golden, damp chest.
Luc’s chest.
Gasping, I stumbled back a step as my hands flew to my towel, holding on to it for dear life. My gaze shot to his.
All the oxygen fled my lungs and my body and my brain at the sight of his expression, his stare.
His eyes were wide, and the purple hue was literally churning, swirling with a potent emotion that singed the tips of my ears. His features were stark and sharp, full of tension. Lips parted, he didn’t seem like he was breathing at all as he stared at me, and he …
Luc looked … hungry.
A fine shiver skated over my skin. Demands rose to the tip of my tongue. Hold me. Touch me. Kiss me. Be with me, because then I wouldn’t have to think about anything else, and I knew Luc could make that possible.
His gaze dipped—dropped to where my fingers clenched the towel and then lower. The towel was big, but it wasn’t long. It barely covered all the lady bits, and his gaze was slow and heavy like a caress.
My heart started pounding in my chest, and those impossibly thick lashes rose as he dragged his gaze back up. I felt like I wasn’t even wearing a towel.
I felt bare.
Our gazes collided, and I realized how close we were standing. Only a couple of feet separated us.
His chest rose. “You’re…” He trailed off, but that one word was deep, raspy.
That one word felt bare.
A hand lifted from his side. One leg moved forward, toward me, and a warm flush spread across my skin. The pupils of his eyes turned to diamonds.