The Morning After

The sound of the shower couldn’t drown out the low roar in my ears—or the thoughts swirling in my brain. Something had happened to Jameson, and he was asking me to drop it.

I didn’t want to.

Tahiti. I could feel our code word on the tip of my tongue as I entered the bathroom. All I had to do was say it, and he would strip away every layer, every mask, everything, leaving only the raw truth behind.

Leaving nothing between us.

Tahiti. I didn’t say it. I just stood on one side of the fogged-up glass while Jameson stood under the spray on the other. I could see the outline of his body. Something in me ached to join him, but I didn’t.

I let him wash off the blood alone.

He’s fine. I knew better than to worry about Jameson Hawthorne. No matter what had happened, he was and would remain fine. But still, I wanted to know.

I needed to, the way I needed him.

On the other side of the glass, Jameson turned off the spray. The towel disappeared from the top of the shower door, and I wondered if he was using it to wipe away the last smears of blood on his chest.

I counted my breaths in the time it took him to open the door. Four. Five. The glass door opened, and Jameson stepped out, the towel wrapped around his waist.

My gaze trailed up from the towel, along the jagged scar on his torso, to the new cuts at the base of his neck.

“All clean,” Jameson told me.

I brought my hand to his chest.

“It’s not even going to scar,” he told me, like that somehow made the fact that someone had cut him less concerning.

Giving him a look that clearly communicated exactly what I thought about that, I let my fingers lightly trace the lines where the blood had once been. His body was hot to the touch—and wet from the shower.

“All clean,” I repeated.

I turned to the counter where I’d laid out the medical supplies and reached for the antibacterial gel first. I smeared some over my finger and then turned back to Jameson. With a feather-light touch, I spread it over his cuts. There were three of them total—the small but deep one at the base of his collarbone, no wider than the width of my smallest nail, and the lighter ones—no more than scratches now—that gave the wound its pseudo-triangular shape.

No, I thought, as I pulled my hand back. Not a triangle. An arrow.