He let go of me with one hand to open the shower door.
“I’m gonna get you clean on the outside first,” he said, walking me into the shower with my panties on.
The hot spray burst onto my chilled skin, shocking it numb for a second until Luke stood under the bulk of it, pulling me into his arms.
We stood like that for a while. I didn’t know how long.
Then he cleaned me.
On the outside, at least.
And that was the only place he could.
Because no matter how certain he’d sounded before, I wasn’t clean on the inside. Not after what happened. Not before, either. And before the story of us was concluded, I’d be tarnished more than ever.
Chapter Eleven
I awoke feeling like shit. Not an unusual occurrence since I liked to party hard, and partying hard meant hangovers.
And I also had experience of being punched, being in a car accident, and almost being blown up—and I knew waking up the day after was not fun.
But that morning was like all of those experiences packaged into one. Everything hurt. My eyeballs hurt. My ribs screamed. My cheek was on fire, the skin stretched uncomfortably tight over the bone, pulling at my face.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. It was the wounds inside that worked to push against my lungs, chain me to the bed with the force of my pain.
My shame.
Kevin’s fingers were inside me once more, shredding me, dirtying me, defiling me.
I clenched my teeth against the tears that wanted to fall, the scream yearning to escape from my throat.
I didn’t for a lot of reasons, a big one being the smell of coffee and the sound of life coming from the direction of my kitchen. My kitchen rarely had sounds of life coming from it, unless it was the blender making margaritas. And since Bex moved out, there was never sounds of life coming anywhere that wasn’t from me.
Luke was here.
It wasn’t the cliché rushing of the events of the night before that came with waking. I knew what happened the second I opened my eyes. I didn’t have a luxurious second of ignorance. My gaze wandered to the space where my rug used to be.
Luke hadn’t left.
Luke was in my kitchen, presumably making coffee. By the sounds of the clanging of metal, breakfast too.
He was doing that because he was a good guy. And that was what good guys did for the women who they’d held in their arms the entire night, not letting go, giving them silent strength. Giving them silence.
My eyes went to the pinkish stain once more. Then, with pain, I craned my neck to my bedside table.
His badge was still lying there. I had a terrible premonition, looking at it, that it wouldn’t be going back on him again.
Because of that stain.
Because of me.
He wasn’t blaming me. He hadn’t left. Escaped. He’d made a choice to pull the trigger. To dump the body. To take off the badge. To stay the night. To make me breakfast.
It was the choice I’d wanted, been waiting on for years.
But it was a forced choice.
I’d killed a man. In front of him. Forcing that choice.
Then I’d forced it even more by making him kill someone too.
My violent life caused this.
I yanked back my covers, intending on just as violently getting out of bed, forcing myself to stomp into the kitchen and end this beautiful thing born out of violence before I could make it ugly.
But the pain hindered that.
So I was forced to gently and gingerly get myself up, tiptoe to my robe, every step, every movement a jolt to muscles and bones that resented me for it.
The time it took me to get to the kitchen was also time for the smell of bacon to drift through my house. I followed it to see Luke’s corded and muscled back, bare, in front of my stove.
I froze, all intentions forgotten with the picture of Luke shirtless in my kitchen. The back of his hair was still mussed from bed. The one he’d woken up with me in.
For a second, I entertained the idea that I could have this. That I’d wake up without all these injuries and pain, step over carpet that wasn’t stained with blood, find Luke in the kitchen and not have to expel him from it. From my life. I could live it with him inside it. That we could somehow fit.
But when you loved someone, truly loved someone, you’d never shave away parts of who they were, cut them up. Which was what I’d have to do if I was to make Luke fit in my kitchen, my life. Cut him to be able to somehow slot into my life. Take away things that made him him.
I couldn’t do that.
I wouldn’t do that.
Because he was an alpha male, and a cop to boot, he sensed my presence.
“Rosie!” Within seconds he was in front of me, hands resting lightly on my hips as if he expected me to topple over. “You’re not meant to be out of bed.” He frowned at me, anger glittering as his eyes went over my face. Featherlight, his touch followed the pattern of what I guessed was an epic shiner. “If I could kill him all over again, I’d make it much slower,” he gritted out, the fury and violence in his voice utterly foreign.
I flinched at that, the readiness to once again unleash something that wasn’t meant to be inside him.
Because he was Luke, the good guy—kind of—he immediately pulled his hand back, fear that he was hurting me filling his eyes.
“Sit down, Rosie. Where does it hurt?”
He gently placed me in a chair and I let him.
He pushed the hair from my face, his own expression granite. “You need a hospital.”
I frowned. “I don’t.”
He glared at me. “I hate that that’s a fucking lie, but that doesn’t mean you’re going to go to one, does it?”
I gave him a smile. It was faker than the Chanel bags sold out of trunks in the Valley.
He frowned deeper. “Remember what I said last night, Rosie. You don’t have to be okay here. You don’t have to be strong for people. You don’t need to shield your feelings from people who you’re scared of hurting or burdening more. I’m not here because you need to protect me from shit. I’m here for the opposite reason. I’m here to be your fuckin’ shield.”
The intensity of the words stole all my oxygen, stole even my heartbeats. There was a second where it all hung on the edge and I almost did it. Let go of everything, let it overtake me, let Luke do that for me. Showed him the Rosie no one had ever seen me be.
Almost.
“Your bacon’s burning,” I said instead.
His face flickered with a lot of things, but then he turned, because his bacon was indeed burning.
He didn’t rush toward the burning bacon. No, Luke didn’t do such things. He purposefully turned his head back to me as he sauntered toward the smoking pan.
“This isn’t over,” he promised.
I waited until he had his back to me to reply, whispering, “It has to be.”
I waited until after we ate, maybe because I was a total fucking masochist. Or because I just wanted one memory to hold onto. Eating the breakfast that a shirtless Luke made me. Chewing on bacon with him across from me.
I could sink into a fleeting fantasy that we were that simple, breakfast and snatched glances.
Granted, he was watching me like a hawk, his eyes haunted as my bruises stared at him harder than my eyes did.
But it was all I could have.