Page 36 of The Truth Between

Iris’s head snapped up to look at me. “Get out.”

I walked into the room. “I can help you by—”

“I don’t need your help,” she said, cutting me off again. “Haven’t you done enough?”

I was caught slightly off guard by how her words made me feel.

“You’re going to take a bath,” I said as I walked toward her bathroom.

“Would it kill you to ask me if I wanted to do something versus demanding that I do so?”

I paused for a second in the doorway before I looked at her over my shoulder. “Would you like to take a bath?”

She hesitated for a moment before nodding her head.

I stepped into the bathroom and started running the bath. Steam from the hot water filled the room, and I used a vanilla-scented bubble bath to form some bubbles in the tub. I grabbed some white, fluffy towels and placed them on the countertop.

I walked into the bedroom and held out my hand for Iris to take, but she stood up without my help and walked past me.

I debated whether I should walk in there and watch her take her bath, much like I’d done when she’d had her first shower here, but would that push her too far over the edge?

I heard her step into the bathtub, and it took everything in me not to turn around. I didn’t get a great look at her outside between being surrounded by darkness in the woods and having a mask on, so the urge to see her naked body was even stronger than normal. But I knew I needed to ease her into all of this versus coming on too strong. Switching up my strategy wouldn’t be the worst thing I’d done.

“I’ll leave you to your bath. If you need anything, I’m all the way at the other end of this hallway.”

Iris didn’t respond, but I was sure she’d heard me.

When I walked to the door, I heard Iris call out my name, so I retraced my steps and ended back in the doorway of the bathroom.

“You asked if there was anything I needed. Well, there is something.”

“What is it?”

“The holidays are coming up and I want to see Gran. She’s getting older, and I don’t know how many more holidays I’ll have with her.”

I considered it for a moment and realized she was right. The holidays were fast approaching, a time meant for joy and being with family. It was something I hadn’t thought about in a while, so the fact that it was that time of year had been lost on me.

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said before walking out of the room.

I couldn’t stand to be in there after I’d given her a bullshit answer. At the snap of my fingers, I could allow her to see her grandmother by letting her go and taking her back to campus.

But I couldn’t do that.

As I walked back to my room, I contemplated her wish. It was the last thing I’d expected her to ask for, the first being that I let her go. But she’d surprised me again. Her request had caught me off guard, to say the least. Letting her visit her grandmother for the holidays was a simple enough ask. But letting her leave would be a huge logistic challenge, and the chances of Parker finding out about it would be high.

I’d done my best to make Iris feel more at home here since I’d let her roam around the mansion, but she was still a prisoner of mine because of her digging into Chevalier affairs that she had no business looking into.

But the holidays were meant for family. Keeping Iris from the only person she had left was cruel, and it would be one more thing she’d hold against me.

I paused at the window in my bedroom, gazing out at the forest I’d just been in. Perhaps permitting this small kindness would be the start of me building something between us that wasn’t based on our history.

Instead of standing near the window for a second more, I strolled over to my bed and settled under the covers. Sleep didn’t come easy, but that wasn’t a surprise because it never did. But I still couldn’t get Iris’s request out of my mind.

I reminded myself that it could be tabled until tomorrow. I closed my eyes and let myself finally surrender to my thoughts and dreams for the night.

22

IRIS

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