Page 35 of The Wrong Man

A sound escapes me. Something embarrassingly close to a moan.

“Alright?” Dante asks, still facing away.

“Yes,” I breathe. “This is... yes.”

I let myself sink deeper, until the water laps at my collarbones. My body feels weightless, supported, cradled by the heat. For the first time in days, some of the tension in my muscles actually releases.

Tears prick at my eyes. Stupid. It’s just a bath. Just warm water and soap. But after everything, after the cold and the fear and the pain, this simple comfort feels like more than I deserve.

I hear movement. The soft pad of footsteps on tile. When I open my eyes, Dante is kneeling beside the tub, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows.

I tense immediately, drawing my knees up toward my chest. The water sloshes with my movement.

“Easy,” he says quietly. “I just want to wash your hair. If you’ll let me.”

My hair. I’d almost forgotten about my hair, lank and greasy and probably a disaster.

“Why?” The question comes out before I can stop it.

He tilts his head slightly. “Because it will make you feel better. And because you can barely lift your arms.”

Both things are true. My failed attempt at removing my shirt proved that. And the thought of actually being clean, properly clean, hair included, is desperately appealing.

But letting him touch me. Letting him put his hands on me when I’m naked and vulnerable and completely at his mercy.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he says, as if reading my thoughts. “I know you don’t believe that yet. But I’m not.”

Yet. He said yet. Like he expects me to believe him eventually. Like he thinks there’s a future where I trust the man who broke me.

The arrogance of it should make me angry. Instead, I just feel hollow.

“Okay,” I whisper, because I don’t have the energy to fight. “Okay.”

He reaches for a cup sitting on the edge of the tub. I hadn’t noticed it before. He dips it into the water and raises it above my head.

“Tip your head back.”

I obey. The warm water cascades over my scalp, running down my neck, dripping from my hair into the bathwater. He does it again, and again, until my hair is thoroughly soaked.

Then I hear the click of a bottle opening. The scent of something clean and faintly herbal fills the air. His fingers touch my scalp, and I flinch before I can stop myself.

He pauses. Waits. Gives me time to adjust to the contact.

When he starts to move again, it’s slowly. Gently. Working the shampoo through my hair with careful, methodical strokes. His fingertips massage my scalp, and despite everything, despite all the reasons I should hate this, my eyes flutter closed.

It feels good. Shamefully, treacherously good.

No one has washed my hair for me since I was a young child. Since long before my parents decided I was too broken to keep, too shameful to love.

My breath hitches. Dante’s hands fall still.

“Dylan?”

“I’m fine.” The lie scrapes out of my throat. “Just... keep going.”

He doesn’t press. Just resumes his gentle ministrations, working the shampoo from my scalp to the ends of my hair. When he’s satisfied, he rinses it out with the same careful thoroughness, shielding my eyes from the suds with one cupped hand.

“There’s conditioner too,” he says. “If you want.”