Then I got in fully clothed and washed the rest of me until I couldn’t tell the difference between the shower spray and my rainfall of tears.
I wasn’t expecting to cry. The tears went off like a bomb inside me. One second, I was numb. The next, a creature of emotions clawed through my chest, breaking skin and crushing bones, and a violent sob cracked apart my lips.
I stayed in the shower nearly an hour, cleansing, rubbing, scouring every inch of my body until I was red and raw. The water was pin-prick cold but somehow still felt scalding hot.
I moved away from it, screamed at it, cried for it until I slapped the faucet off and sank to the bottom of the tub and wished I could drown on air.
If I could have one wish, it wouldn’t have been to bring back Derek.It would have been to make the thing I needed to survive the very thing that killed me.
That way, I wouldn’t have to try so fucking hard to die. It would just happen. I’d suck down air, and it would fill my lungs with mocking venom, each gasp for breath bringing me closer to a death I couldn’t escape.
Even that hour later, James still wasn’t back. I got out of the shower, nose red and sore like the rest of my body, and went to lay in bed, naked and drenched head to toe. The sheets beneath whined as I soaked them with my naked skin and sopping wet hair, but I smothered their discomforted cries against my body, pulling them closer.
I laid there and tried to convince myself to get up and move, get up and get the fuck out before he came back.
My muscles wouldn't listen though. They’d turned off their ears and snuggled up beneath the heavy comforter that reminded them of James’ warm touch. His heavy arms draped over me, holding me and absorbing all of my tears.
He believed me.
I still didn’t get it. I was sure I never would.
No one else would believe the wild girl with the wild hair and wild mouth who made wild choices that ruined lives. She was a problem child. She wasn’t trust-worthy. She probably asked for it.
She was always to blame.
The lock on the door clanked, and my body flinched with a jolt at the sound. James came through seconds later wearing his old shirt and jeans and an expression that sprang me upright in bed.
His eyes fell to mine, and I held the sheets around my naked chest tighter. His gaze was so hot, I wasn’t at all convinced it couldn’t burn the fabric around me back to single threads.
He shut the door behind him and flicked the lock in place with his long fingers.
He stood there, arms hanging loose and wide at his sides.
Everything else about him was tense though. The cords in his thick neck were strained. His shoulders pulled tight, and his jaw was rock hard cement. Unbroken but jaggedly formed. I took all of him in, every unyielding muscle beneath his dirt-smathered skin. His feet were bare and nearly black with soil and evidence.
The energy between us was just as sullied and taut as his body.
James said nothing, and I heard his nothing so loudly.
I felt it in my bones, congealing into the marrow so that I was made up of his resounding silence. His gaze held me still on the bed as he looked me over, not at all reacting to my nakedness beneath the sheets or the fact that I was still here like I said I would be.
Any other time, he would have reacted to both. Joy and shock that I hadn’t escaped. Anger and shame-tinted lust at my flimsy sheet of clothing that left more bare than he’d care to see.
For now, he just got undressed.
He reached over his shoulders and clasped his hands on the back of his shirt, pulling it over his head. I watched his already unruly hair fluff out in places and twist in others as the material slid along his head. He dropped it to the floor. Bare chested and huge, James stood there looking like a chiseled statue that had been marred in brown and rust-red graffiti.
Earth and blood encrusted between groves of muscles and dried along the trail of dark hair that disappeared beneath the band of his jeans. He wore no undershirt like the one he left in. Probably burned and buried with Derek’s body.
A thorn of guilt sunk a slow pain between my breastbone, and I held back a whimper.
James Reyes was a thing of unnatural beauty, and I had permanently stained his perfection.
He could wash away the dirt. He could wash away the grime and blood, but he could never wash away the knowledge of what we’d done today.
He took off in slow strides toward the bathroom, unbuttoning his jeans along the way. The shower kicked on seconds later, and I foolishly wondered if he’d be able to know how I cried myself insane in there earlier.
As if he could sense my tears and anguish in the hollow slopes of the tub.