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Luka had held her all day. She was still cold. It wasn’t that she couldn’t feel his warmth around her. It was as if it couldn’t penetrate her form.
Her fingers uncurled, numb from how hard she’d been holding on to him. She rubbed them in slow circles over his back, working through the tingling return of sensation. Her fingers hit a wetness toward his hip.
“Are you hurt?” she asked, the words more of a mumble in her state. Her own wounds were throbbing. She only remembered the stab in her side, but there was stinging in other places. Familiar pinches of pain that tried to drag her mind into memories.
Luka’s heartbeat filtered through it, keeping her in the present.
His head moved against her hair. She couldn’t tell if it was a nod or a shake, but assumed the latter. Luka never complained.
“I think I am,” she admitted. The stab on her side was really beginning to ache.
Luka pulled back from her, and she regretted her admission. She missed the way his face had pressed against her hair, missed the tightness of his arms.
His lighter-colored eyes seemed to pierce through the darkness. Then he was tugging her to her feet, herding her toward the bathroom.
Alina turned on the light. She studied herself in the mirror. She looked hideous. Blood had dried in her hair, darkening clumps of it. More smeared her face and her neck above the collar of Luka’s shirt. It streaked down below the black cotton.
Luka was no longer touching her. She felt even colder.
He had turned, and the shower added its pattering sound to the stillness. He adjusted the temperature, his hand under the stream to test it. A light steam began to mist out.
Alina pulled off the shirt he had given her. It clung to the wound on her side, then made it throb harder as it pulled free. She let it drop to the floor and stared at the wound. It was deep and continued to hurt.
The bathroom counter blocked the mirror from showing her anything below her waist. She could make out the cuts on her thighs if she looked down without the reflection. Cuts like his father had given her, only she hadn’t noticed them being done this time.
When Luka turned from the shower and started to leave, panic hit her.
“Don’t go!” Her eyes closed so she didn’t have to see his expression. It probably wasn’t anything bad like she imagined. It was Luka; she could be honest with him. “I don’t want to be alone.”
He stopped; she hadn’t needed to worry. When she opened her eyes, he was wearing the blank face he showed the world.
Getting into the shower sapped the last of her energy. She didn’t bother closing the glass door, not caring if water splashed the tiles. The warm water soaked her hair and landed against her body. It took everything she had to reach out for the bar of soap. When it slipped from her fingers, she wanted to cry. Her head bent as it thudded and slid away. Water dripped into her eyes, running down her face in place of the tears she didn’t have left.
Luka’s hand, the one with the cross, reached for the soap. He stepped into the shower behind her, still clothed. He hesitated, but when she continued to let her hands lay limply at her sides, he brought the bar of soap to her shoulder, and he began bathing her. The soap glided across her skin so carefully, not his hands. It would have been more effective had he lathered it, but she understood and was grateful.
Alina watched as he washed the dirt and blood from her skin.
He was careful around her wounds, skirting the biggest one.
Soon only bruises mottled her body, and she was mostly clean. All but her hair.
Luka put the bar of soap back in its cubby and reached for the shampoo. He still wore his black gloves. The white soap, smelling of mint and coconut, looked milky against the material. She turned to face him. He reached for her head.
The way his jaw tensed, she knew touching her hurt him through the gloves. All she felt were tingles from how gently he worked the shampoo through her hair. She shifted forward, out of the spray. Her head lowered, her forehead pressing against his chest. His hands stilled, then continued to wash her hair.
She had to lean her head back into the spray so he could rinse it clear. Her hands rose, pressing against his chest for purchase. He shuddered under her touch, and she felt a warm ache down below where he’d already washed her. It almost tingled, but not as much as her scalp did, and soon faded away.
The dullness from before had sunk in by the time he turned the water off. She let Luka dry her, his motions still so careful. Her forehead found his chest again as he squeezed damp strands of her hair with the towel.
She stared at the places where his wet clothes clung to him. She’d seen men with erections, even clothed. Luka didn’t look like they had. Bathing her hadn’t been sexual for him. He’d only been caring for her.
Her hair was still damp when he dropped the towel to the floor, but he’d dried it as well as he could. His gloves spanned her hips, and he lifted her to sit on the bathroom counter. All the supplies had been put neatly away once the time between his own bandage changes lengthened. Now he pulled the things necessary out again and tended to the cuts that had been inflicted on her. Ointment and bandages followed.
The steam in the bathroom faded through the open door, and Alina began to shiver. “Can I wear one of your shirts?” she asked.
He left, coming back in with one and slipping it over her head. His gloves made the material damp in spots, especially when he lifted her down from the counter. He led her to the bed, and she curled onto her good side, the one that hadn’t been stabbed.
Her eyes didn’t follow him back to the bathroom, where he must have been discarding his own wet things. She should have gone with him, checked him over for his own wounds. There had been that dampness at his hip.
