Page 78 of Born of Ice

She made me want something I’ve never had. Never thought was possible.

I flick the popcorn I was about to eat back into the bucket, scowling at it like that’s where all my troubles are hiding and notin that woman who still hasn’t come out of the room. I’ve had the movie and snacks set up for the past fifteen minutes, but Electra is nowhere to be seen.

“Angry elf,” I holler, “I’m not getting any younger out here.”

But she doesn’t respond. I call out her name again and when I’m met with another string of deadly silence, a crippling chill descends upon me, and I jump off the couch, sending the full bow of popcorn to the ground as it scatters around.

It’s not a huge house, there is no way she couldn’t hear me.

She’s been doing so good these past weeks. Her panic attacks are becoming few and far between and they are not as intense as the ones she had when I first moved in. She doesn’t get that faraway look in her eyes all that much and doesn’t freeze into an ice sculpture whenever she sees me touching her legs. Electra even started talking about her early career days, giving me some missing bits and pieces but never venturing into the heavier topics, and I gladly take whatever she’s willing to give me, but maybe that was a mistake.

Maybe I should’ve kept pushing like I knew she needed me to.

In a rush, I dart into our room but find it empty. So is the walk-in closet and tremors set into my bones. There’s only one place I hadn’t checked and I’m terrified to go in there. Why do they always have to make the bathroom a site of something gruesome in the movies? Why is it always the bathroom that draws the final line in one’s life?

No, it won’t be hers. I run out of the room and slam through the bathroom door, nearly taking it off the hinges with my shoulder, only to find Electra simply sitting in the middle of the room, looking around.

“Fucking hell, Electra! You can’t do this shit to me!” I bend at the waist, bracing my hands on my knees as I will air into my lungs and steady my wild heartbeat. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

She’s okay. She’s alive and well. The darkness hasn’t taken over. She’s okay, but I’m not.

My breaths are shaky at best, and I feel moisture lining the bottom of my eyes.

She’s okay. She’s okay. She’s okay.

“Do you know how many things we take for granted?” Electra says calmly, as if I’m not dying over here and about to flip out on her when the tone of her voice fully registers.

It’s not the good kind of calm, not the one she usually is for me.

No, this is the deadly kind. It’s flat and emotionless. Cold.

“Say, a bath. I never appreciated it until I couldn’t have it anymore.”

A bath…she gave me a fucking heart attack because of a fucking bath? I’m gonna kill her.

“I haven’t had one in months. Did you know that? It’s not something you normally think about, is it? But it’s a luxury I can no longer afford. Hell, I didn’t like taking baths before the accident, yet now that’s all I’ve been thinking about. All I want.

“There are those that have a door and you can wheel yourself in there, close it and fill it, but then you have to sit there, shivering from cold when it empties so you can open the door again. It’s meant to be something great for disabled people but instead it makes you feel the weight of your loss all the more. It makes you feel like that cripple you really are.”

And just like that, my anger is gone only to be replaced with burning sadness for my little fallen star.

She just wants a bath.

My strong but very much defeated girl just wants a fucking bath.

Without a single thought, I stride to the gorgeous, free-standing bathtub. Now seeing how it must’ve been mocking her all these days. There, within her reach, but not. Just anothertiny reminder of her current situation. Another thing that kept dinging against her armor every time she’s seen it.

I turn on the faucet until I’m happy with the temperature of the water and put the stopper in, filling the tub.

“What are you doing, Exton?” she asks as if she just noticed my presence in here, but I ignore her, looking for what I need.

“Found it,” I murmur to myself as I pull out the small bottle of bubble bath that often comes together in a set of decorative bath soaps which she happens to have.

“Found what?” Instead of answering, I walk back to the tub and pour half the small bottle in.

The foamy bubbles form almost instantly and Electra gasps. “Exton.”

“Mm-hmm?” I ask as I turn toward her.

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