I’m not scared for him when he turns his back on those men. I’m not scared for me. He’s far more dangerous than I thought. He’s saved me twice. The contradiction doesn’t leave room for anything but the struggle to get warm.
“Why didn’t you shoot them?” I feel compelled to ask this. Conversation will pass the time, and I want to know. The more I think about Leo’s tall, hard body in that alley, the more I have to understand why.
He scoffs. “Those men didn’t deserve the mercy of a bullet through the head.” Leo’s a good driver, his hands steady on the wheel. I feel stupidly safe right now. “And guns are a coward’s way out. If you’re going to kill someone, do it with your eyes open.”
It happens on the way back to his house. The heat wraps around the coat, and I can’t keep my eyes open. I drift in and out and only wake up when a gust of cold wind hits me from the open door of the SUV.
Leo leans in over me, undoes my seat belt, and swings my legs out of the car. “Can you walk?”
“Yes.” A frisson of offense. “Of course I can.”
“When I found you tonight, you couldn’t run.” He wraps an arm around me and the coat and hurries me up the front steps. We go through the front door. I trip over the rubber toe of one of my boots, but with my hands in the overcoat I can’t catch myself. He catches me instead, bundling me up into his arms with an irritated sigh. “This time, so we’re clear, you’re staying where I put you. Not fucking off to the city and getting yourself killed.”
“I didn’t get killed.” He turns at the top of the stairs, and I think he’s going to take me to the guest room. I brace for it. But instead he shoulders open the door to his bedroom and goes inside. Leo deposits me on my feet at the foot of the bed. “Why are we in here?”
“Your clothes are wet.” He disappears from view. “And filthy. Come on.”
It has to be a trap. It wasn’t very long ago that he threatened me with a severe whipping for going this way without permission. But my skin prickles with the need to stay near him. As close as possible.
Leo emerges from his closet with an armful of clothes and goes down the hall without looking back. I follow him into the bathroom. Water rushes into the tub and he sits on the edge, a hand dipped in to test the warmth. He shakes off the droplets with an assessing look at me. Then he comes back and works his hands quickly over my clothes. The overcoat falls in a heap. The dress next. My shoes. Leggings. Everything. Then he walks me over to the tub with his hands on my shoulders and helps me step inside.
“This isn’t like you,” I say, from somewhere outside my body.
“Please. I don’t let filth inside my house. On your knees.”
A shameful heat echoes between my legs, but when I’m up on my knees in the tub, Leo doesn’t put his fingers in my mouth or order me to suck him off or any of the infinite dirty things he could do.
He washes my hair. He conditions it. He presses a washcloth into my hand so I can clean my skin. Under other circumstances I’d float in this tub forever. Now I want the water off me. I want it to go down the drain and take the fingerprints of those men with it. At the end of the bath Leo unfolds a towel and holds it wide, and I step into it. There. There. It’s over. That part is over, at least. He lets me fold it over my chest and tuck it in.
I run a hand over my wet hair. “I bet you don’t have a brush in here.” Leo stands in the middle of his bathroom. Dark jeans. Dark shirt. And a darker patch on the front of that shirt that has a strange shine to it. My heart stutters. “Is that blood?” He changed his shirt. He threw the original shirt in the fire. This is a new one. “Is that yours?”
Leo glances down at the front of his shirt. A ginger touch to the darker spot. His fingers come away red. “One of them had a knife. I wasn’t paying much attention to it.”
“Oh my god.” I go to him without thinking and reach for the hem of his shirt. His hand comes down hard on mine, his eyes blazing, but I shake it off. “Leo, let me see. You’re bleeding. You’re hurt.”
“It’s a scratch. I don’t even feel it.”
Those words sound true, in his strong, clear voice. But I look into his dark eyes and see he’s lying.
It’s a wretched lie. A lie he wishes he didn’t have to tell. Because he does feel it. The gold streaks in his eyes are bright with pain. So bright it takes my breath away. My heart tips onto the floor and breaks like a delicate vase. He feels this pain and all his past pain. Leo Morelli is a tuning fork of pain. It runs through him in such jagged vibrations that the only way to look directly at it is to pretend it’s anger. If you see it for what it is—
God.
I draw myself up to my full height. “Sit down. You shouldn’t be standing.”
His eyes flutter closed for a bare instant, and the broken pieces of my heart burst apart again. He follows me to the bench by his tub and sits, his jaw tight.
I knot the towel more securely around my chest. “I have to take your shirt off to see.” He gives a terse nod and another layer of pretense falls away. The cloth of his shirt is stuck to his skin in the front. Leo braces his hands on the side of the tub and grits his teeth. “I’ll be fast.”
Leo hisses when I pull the fabric away from his skin, his whole body tensing. He helps me get the shirt over his head. I drop it to the floor. Leo puts his hands back on the edge of the tub and stares at the ceiling.
The cut isn’t as deep as I feared, but it’s longer—a slash. “Do you think we should go to the—”
“No,” he barks. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I glare at him, and he glares back, but it doesn’t last. His face softens. “I’m not going to any hospital in the city. People will talk.”
I’m guessing that means he doesn’t trust anyone to come to him, either. A beast doesn’t need civilized things like doctors and hospitals. He’d only go if he had no other choice. “Okay. Do you have a first aid kit?”
“Top shelf of the closet.”
I find it, then come back with towels and washcloths. I kneel next to him on the bench and lean into the tub to run more warm water. Leo makes a low sound.
“What?”
“Your towel’s coming off.”
It is. It’s almost halfway off one breast. “Thank you,” I tell him.
For the first time, he doesn’t sneer, or taunt. I dip a clean washcloth in warm water, then settle onto the bench next to him. “I don’t think you’ll need stitches, but we should clean it.”
“Do it, then.” Leo’s knuckles go white on the edge of the tub. An ache drills itself into my chest. I wish I could cry to untwist that knot, but it seems wrong to cry. Disingenuous.
He’s the one in pain, not me, and it’s sketched in every tense angle of his muscles. He doesn’t let his back make contact with the stones. It’s so subtle, the way he keeps his skin from touching. So obvious to anyone who bothers to look. My heart beats like soft, frantic wings in an erratic pattern. I’ve never been this close to him. Not like this.
“Haley,” he says, and I could cry.
I brush my fingers over the curve of his shoulder, where there are no scars. “Is this okay?”