Page 152 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
“I’m so tired—” A yawn caught her mid-sentence, and she pressed her fingers to her mouth like she could take it back. “I feel like I just need a shower or something, but I don’t know if I have the energy for it.”
She’d barely finished her thought before I was already moving.
“Let me handle it. I’ll be right back.”
The bathroom was the kind of old that had been well-kept—original hex tile and a clawfoot tub that took up most of the room and made no apologies about it. I turned the taps until the water ran hot and stayed there. Then I found scented oils lined up on the shelf above the towel— the same floral scents that lived in the rest of the apartment—tipped a measure or two into the water, and lit candles around the room.
Steam and candlelight filled the space.
“Bath’s ready,” I let her know.
She looked up. The exhaustion on her face was apparent—she wasn’t just tired, she had that particular hollowness that came with doing something emotionally significant and coming out the other side of it.
She stood and swayed.
My hands found her before I’d decided to move. “Hey.”
“I’m okay,” she said, which was not entirely convincing from someone I was currently preventing from toppling over.
She reached for the hem of her shirt with fingers that had stopped cooperating, and I stepped in without a comment. She let me. Didn’t protest, didn’t deflect with humor—just let me, which told me more about how wrung out she was than anything else could have.
I carried her to the bathroom. She tucked her face against my neck and didn’t say anything. I didn’t either.
The tub was deep, and the water had stayed hot. I lowered her in slowly, and she sank into it with complete surrender. Her eyes closed before she fully settled. The tension in her face released by degrees—her jaw first, then her shoulders, and then around her eyes.
I sat on the edge of the tub and watched it happen.
“Get in with me?” she asked.
I looked at the tub. She looked at me. It was a one-person tub with a little extra room.“Sure. I need to grab a change of clothes from my car.”
“Okay.”
I placed a gentle kiss on her forehead before I left, taking a slight detour to change the sheets and blanket on Jem’s bed first.
The cool night air was a small shock after the heat of the bathroom. I grabbed the bag I kept in my trunk out of habit—for calls that came in after hours and required more than a basic examination. For a moment, I stood there in the dark parking lot behind Sacred Serenity, not moving. Above me, light fell from Delaney’s apartment window in a soft rectangle onto the pavement below.
She’d asked me to stay.
Once I returned to the bathroom, I quickly shed my clothes and climbed into the tub. She settled against my chest and let out a soft sigh. “This is better.”
The bathroom was still warm with steam, and the candles threw off soft shadows on the wall. She sank into the water, her eyes closed before she was fully settled, and the muscles in her face relaxed.
I didn’t speak. I washed her hair, working the shampoo through it slowly with my fingers until she made a small, involuntary sound that wasn’t quite a word. I worked thefacecloth across her shoulders and felt the last of the tension go out of them under my hands.
She didn’t speak, either.
When the water had cooled past comfortable, I reached around her and pulled the drain. She gave a half-hearted protest.
“Come on,” I coaxed.
I dried her off with the large, bright pink, fluffy towel that had clearly been Jem’s—there was no version of events in which that towel belonged to anyone who didn’t have extremely strong opinions about joy. Delaney made a token effort to take it from me before giving up and letting someone else carry the burden for once.
I pulled a soft sleepshirt over her head. She emerged from it blinking, soft-eyed, and so tired her face was pale.
“Where do you want to sleep?”
She was silent. Her eyes moved to the hallway, to the bedroom door still standing open, and to the dark beyond it.
