Page 35 of Hush, Little Baby

I smile faintly. “Both, then.”

“You don’t get to act like you’re being nice.”

“I am being nice.”

“You kidnapped me.”

“I did.”

“Nice people don’t kidnap people,” he grunts.

“No,” I agree. “I suppose they don’t.”

The washcloth lowers slightly. One red-rimmed eye peeks at me over the edge. “You’re really not going to argue?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t need you to think I’m nice. Not tonight, at least.”

His brow pinches.

“Tonight, I need you clean,” I continue, combing gently through the last knot with my fingers. “Warm, fed, and rested. The rest will come.”

His eye disappears behind the cloth again. Charlie is thinking; I can almost feel the frantic little wheel of his mind spinning, grasping for paths out, arguments, threats, bargains. He does not yet understand that none of them will work, and I am not cruel enough to rob him of hope before sleep.

Not all at once.

I rinse the conditioner out. This time, he tilts his head when I tell him to. Keeps the cloth over his eyes. Breathes when I say, “Breathe.” He still flinches when water slides too close to his ear, still mumbles once that I’m pulling even though my fingers are nowhere near a tangle, but he obeys.

It is not surrender. It is exhaustion wearing surrender’s clothes. But for tonight, I’ll take it.

When his hair is finally clean, I set the pitcher aside and hold my hand out. “Give me the washcloth, please.”

His hand tightens on it. “Why?”

“Because I need to wash your face.”

“I can wash my face.”

“Can you?”

“Yes.”

“Then show me.”

Suspicion flickers across his expression as he lowers the damp cloth into my palm. He looks at me as if I have offered him a knife and expects to be punished for taking it.

I simply lean back and hand him a fresh cloth.

Cautiously, he takes it. He dips it into the bathwater, wrings it poorly, and wipes at his cheeks. His hands are clumsy from fatigue, his movements too rough over the skin beneath his eyes.

“Be gentle, baby,” I correct.

He glares at me over the cloth, to which I lift my brows. After a second, his hand slows.

“Good boy.”