Page 9 of Inked Athena

I clear my throat. “Get the yacht ready. We’ll set sail in two days.”

Before he can point out my non-answer, I hang up and step back into the cool dark of the cabin.

As soon as I do, I realize I’m making plans to run away with a woman who hasn’t even spoken to me in days. Not unless you count whimpering nightmares and groans of pain as I change her bandages.

We need to talk—but I don’t know how to start.

No matter how many ways I turn things over and shift them around, I can’t make any goddamn sense of the fact that I watched Nova betray me on video, and yet… I’m here tending to her wounds. I’m stroking her sweat-soaked back through nightmares and combing tangles out of her hair and force-feeding her broth I made by hand.

I’m taking care of her, when, if she was anyone else, she’d already be dead.

A fact I’m sure she’s aware of, which is why she flinches when I open the bedroom door.

She’s sitting on the edge of the bed in nothing but a t-shirt, gray sweatpants pooled on the floor around her ankles. She drops her gaze the moment she sees me and tucks her long locks behind her ears.

“I made broth.” My voice comes out rough, hungry in a way that has nothing to do with food.

“I’m not hungry.” Her forehead pinches at the center, mouth turned down at the corners.

“Eat anyway.”

She turns her head to the side, chin set. “No, thank you.”

I sigh and bend to grab the sweatpants to help her pull them on.

“No! Don’t—” She wheezes out a breath. “Leave them there. I’ll get them.”

“A week from now, when you can bend at the waist without crying, you mean? You’re going to want pants before then.”

“I’m not helpless. You don’t have to do—” She gestures with her good arm to me and the broth and the sweats. “—this. Any of it.”

I know I don’t. By all accounts, I shouldn’t be.

In another world, Nova would be wrapped in a trash bag in the back of a freezer somewhere until the police stopped looking for her.

Instead, I’m reasoning with her to eat soup and let me help her get dressed.

I fucking dare someone to make that make sense.

“Well, I don’t see anyone else lining up for the job, so I’m what you’ve got.”

“I never asked you to follow me here and play nurse.”

“No, you didn’t. I came to the middle of nowhere for the simple joy of your company,” I fire back.

Her brown eyes are on mine, stormy and stubborn. Then her chin wobbles and the fight drains out of her.

She drops her head, hiding her face behind a curtain of hair. “I’m sorry. I’m— I wanted to take a bath. I thought I could make it, but I can’t— I couldn’t?—”

“No, you can’t,” I agree, already turning towards the bathroom. “But I can.”

Her lips twist together nervously. I’m sure she’s thinking what I’m thinking. Well, not exactly what I’m thinking—my thoughts have taken on a hot, gauzy quality all of a sudden.

But our minds are in the same general location: I’m going to see her naked.

I gave her a sponge bath when she was unconscious, cleaning her wounds through her clothes. But this is different. This is skin and vulnerability and trust she probably shouldn’t give me.

Her shoulders slump with resignation, and she nods. “Okay.”

---