Page 43 of Vicious Hearts

I grin. “We can share. To save water, of course.”

* * *

The cubicle is small, but the shower itself is powerful. I set the water running, steam building up as Roxy and I shed our clothes.

My plan was to fuck her senseless again, but something about her demeanor gives me pause, and I step into the flow of water, pulling her in with me. She’s passive, letting me hold her, but I know something is very wrong.

The shower gel is cold in my hands, and she shivers as I work it into a lather on her skin. She sighs as I run my palms over her breasts, her ass, and between her thighs, suds running down her legs. I touch her stomach, and she shudders, instinctively covering herself with her hands.

“Don’t hide your body from me, Rox.” I take her wrists and lift her arms, wrapping them around my neck. Her full tits are slippery against me. “You’re beautiful. I wish you could see yourself the way I see you.”

She’s crying. I couldn’t tell before, but now I’m looking into her eyes, I can see the tears.

“My father used to call me fat,” she says. “It was his way of discouraging me from eating. When you want to spend money on drugs and not food, it makes sense.”

I hold her close. Being naked and vulnerable like this makes her feel she can talk to me, and I want to listen. That is, as long as she doesn’t try to dig around inmyhead. After what she said about justice, I doubt she’d like what she found.

I talked a lot when she was in the hospital. Not about the things Ineverspeak of—my parents, my childhood—but I did tell her other things. About the Bratva, about my life since Pavel Gurin took me at sixteen years old. It’s only now I realize that I never askedhera fucking thing.

“Your father was an addict? That’s a tough way to live,” I say, stroking her back.

There’s a long silence. When Roxy speaks, she sounds like a child.

“He was bipolar. He wouldn’t take the medication, said it was too expensive and didn’t help enough. Meth leveled him out better, or so he thought, but it was just a way to justify it to himself.”

I wasn’t expecting to find we had anything in common. We’re different people—her so sunny and compassionate, me with my personality deficits and anger problem. Fascinating how two people experience trauma and respond so differently.

I shut off the water and reach for the towels.

“Do you want to talk about it,charodeyka?”

Roxy wraps a towel around her, patting her face dry.

“Not now,” she says. “I want to do something normal couples do.”

I smile. “So let’s go out.”

* * *

I leave Roxy getting ready and go onto the balcony, cell phone in hand.

I’m aware of something knocking at my brain, trying to get my attention. I want to ignore it, but I can’t.

Roxy’s father was a man with a fractured mind, but she loved him, or at least she tried to. Now she’s fixated on redeeming Farraday, a mentally ill man who maynotbe a monster after all.

Is she playing out the same scene again by being with me? Does she think love has to hurt? Because I’m not the man to help her heal. I’m as broken as she is.

I could try. There’s no way I can give her up, not knowing what I know. The little girl she used to be is still there, full of light and optimism, and I could never do anything to snuff out the inner strength she doesn’t even know she has.

She’sdistractingme, though. I can feel it. The sharpness of my mind is dulled and softened by my feelings for her. I’m not thinking straight.

I close my eyes and try to focus on what I know about The Dollmaker. My thoughts are a jumble of unfinished ruminations and tangled threads, and I recognize a sensation I’ve felt before.

The whole point of an epiphany is that it’s sudden. A revelation that slaps you in the face and changes everything. But my mind is a strange thing.

All the pieces are there. Everything I need to know is bouncing around inside my head, colliding with the millions of other scraps of knowledge and intuition that I have to sift through. Finding the nuggets that have value is like panning for gold.

An epiphanyiscoming. Farraday never felt like the right fit, and it’s because I never gotthissensation—the buzzing tension that comes from knowing a breakthrough is gonna happen.

---