Page 71 of Bend & Break
He cuts me off with a look, then with a kiss, quick and firm. “Not up for debate,” he murmurs against my lips.
His fingers find the buttons of my top, working them open one by one, and I don’t fight him this time. The fabric peels away, falling to join his. By the time he’s nudging me toward the shower and twisting the handle, steam is already curling around us.
The spray is warm and just what I need. He doesn’t give me a chance to move on my own—he takes the soap, lathers his hands, and starts at my shoulders, working down my arms with a gentleness that makes my throat ache.
“You’re going to soak your bandages,” I protest weakly, watching the water drip down his chest, turning pink where it trails through blood he hasn’t bothered to scrub off himself.
“Doesn’t matter.” He leans in and kisses the corner of my mouth. “You matter.”
He tilts my chin, washing the dirt from my jaw, the smear of dried blood from my neck. Every time I start to argue—to tell him he’s the one who needs care—he kisses me again, quieting me with lips that taste a bit like copper and stale beer, but I really don’t care because it’s him.
By the time he’s finished, we’re both under the spray, wrapped around each other and unmoving, letting it wash over us. My cheek rests against his chest, his arms locked tight around me, his breath steady against the crown of my head.
The water beats down, carrying away the blood, the dirt, everything. The last few weeks swirl down the drain until it’s only the two of us left. In the quiet, with his hands on me—gentle, steady—I know what we are.
What we’ve become in the middle of all this.
In love.
By the timewe crawl into bed, the rain outside beats steadily against the tin roof, wrapping the night in a hush that feels a thousand miles from everything else. The room is dim, lit only by the glow of the laptop on the blanket between us. The drive’s plugged in, waiting, taunting. Because even after everything we’ve been through tonight, it’s still the priority.
I sit cross-legged, damp hair dripping down my back. Mads settles behind me, pulling a comb gently through the tangles.
“Tell me again what Riley said.” He sections off my hair and starts to braid, surprising me in the best way. I pause, twist just enough to press a kiss to him on the lips, careful not to ruin his handiwork.
I open a new window on the screen. “Partition reader. Rebuild it in chunks. Focus on the headers.”
“Sounds simple enough.” His voice is skeptical, but there’s a quiet undercurrent of hope there, too. He knows more about this than I do, but he’s willing to try whatever.
I huff a laugh. “Simple. Right. Let’s just hope it works before my laptop decides to explode.”
“If it does, you can borrow mine. Though fair warning—it’s mostly porn and half-finished essays on there.”
I nudge him with an elbow in his good ribs, earning a grunt before he dips down to kiss the spot where my neck meets my shoulder.
Lines of code scroll past as I start the process Riley described—partition reader pulling fragments, headers isolating, data piecing itself back together one block at a time. Every string that reappears feels like proof this might actually work.
Mads leans down, presses a kiss to the damp top of my head as he ties off the end of my braid. “We’ve got this, Blue.”
The program runs slow, too slow, little progress bars creeping like they’re mocking me. I keep clicking through directories, checking, rechecking, forcing myself not to panic every time another corrupted block of data flashes red before flickering back to green.
An hour later, I’m bleary-eyed, staring at the same screen like it might eat me alive, when Mads comes back from wherever he disappeared to and nudges something against my lips.
“Open,” he says.
I blink, confused, then catch the smell. Fucking tacos. “Are you?—”
“Shut up and eat.” He demands, holding the taco like it’s a spoonful of medicine he’s determined to get into me.
I groan but take a bite, too hungry to argue. The taste is heaven after everything tonight, and he grins like he’s won some kind of victory.
“You’re always so full of surprises,” I mumble through a mouthful.
He wipes a smear of sauce off my lip with his thumb before popping half a cinnamon twist into his own mouth.
By the time I’ve choked down half a dozen tacos and eaten more of the cinnamon twists than I’ll admit, the program’s still churning, lines of code crawling like molasses.
Mads doesn’t seem to care. He stretches out behind me, one arm draped heavily across my waist, the other sneaking chips out of the bag when he thinks I’m not looking.
