Page 180

“Why are you being so gentle?” I ask, my voice one notch above a whisper.

His hands never stop. “Because I spent weeks trying to scare you off. You stayed. The least I can do is treat you like you deserve.”

I don’t mean to cry. But the tears come anyways, hot as they slide down my cheeks and mix with the bathwater. Myshoulders shake with the effort of containing this tidal wave offeelingthat’s crashing through me without so much as a signed permission slip.

“Rae?” Lukas stills. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I say. “It’s dumb. I just— No one’s ever?—”

I can’t finish my thought. The weight of being cared for is crushing me in the best possible way.

Lukas doesn’t say anything. He just tilts my head back and rinses the shampoo out with cupped handfuls of water, careful to keep the suds from my eyes. Then he reaches for the conditioner.

“My mother used to do this,” I hear myself say. “When I was little. Sunday nights before school—that was ‘Everett Girl Spa Night.’ She’d wash my hair and tell me stories about when she was young. Then she’d let me braid hers. Even when I did a terrible job, she’d go to work the next day and brag about it to everyone.”

Lukas’s hands pause for just a moment, then continue their work. “Tell me about her.”

So I do.

I tell him about her laugh, loud and snorting, completely undignified, a head-turner in any room. How she burned everything she tried to cook except pancakes, which she made perfectly every single time. The way she’d dance in the kitchen to old Motown songs and pull my dad in by his tie when he got home from work and make him dance with her, even though he had about as much rhythm and hip movement as our refrigerator, and how he loved her enough to let her get away with it.

Then I tell him about the accident. The phone call. The look in Gideon’s face as I told him what had happened.

Lukas listens without interrupting. His fingers work through my hair, untangling knots with inexhaustible patience.

“You’ve been taking care of everyone else for a long time,” he observes quietly.

“Someone had to.”

“Not anymore.” His arms wrap around me from behind, pulling me flush against his chest. “I’m here now.”

I sink into the silent comfort of his embrace like it’s a kind of warm bath of its own. But there’s a prickly uncertainty squirming inside me, despite how good it feels right here and right now. I want to be happy, but I can’t until I’ve cleared the air on this one silly thing.

“Lukas?” I clear my throat so I don’t sound so squeaky. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“It’s silly. But it’s been bothering me.”

“Anything,” he says again. “Anything at all.”

I trace idle patterns in the bathwater. “That woman, Natasha, the one who was in your office that day…” I feel his chest tense against my back. “Who is she to you?”

He’s quiet for long enough that I start to regret asking. Then he exhales slowly, his breath stirring the damp hair at my temple.

“A reminder of who I used to be.”

I wait for more. Eventually, he gives it.

“After Elena died, I didn’t want to feel anything. Natasha was convenient. She knew the arrangement and never asked for more.” His arms tighten around me. “She won’t be a problem anymore.”

“You ended things with her?”

“There was nothing to end. There never was.” He leaves a kiss on my shoulder. “She was a placeholder for emptiness. You’re something else entirely.”

I turn in his arms, water sloshing against the sides of the tub, until I’m facing him. His gray eyes are soft in the candlelight and I cup his bearded jaw in my wet hands.

“Thank you for telling me,” I say. “I know that wasn’t easy.”