Page 95 of Born in Fire
Twenty minutes later, I’m guiding her into my apartment. Her eyes track over exposed brick walls, the massive windows, the eclectic mix of furniture and art. She pauses at a dragon sculpture on the coffee table, fingers hovering over its wings.
“Beautiful,” she murmurs.
I can’t take my eyes off her. “Yes.”
She sways suddenly, exhaustion catching up. I’m at her side instantly, steadying her. My hands grip her shoulders, feeling how delicate she is beneath my fingers. Fragile, yet somehow stronger than she looks. Her skin radiates warmth through the thin fabric of her shirt, and I resist the urge to pull her closer.
“Easy there,” I murmur. Something protective and unfamiliar stirs in my chest as I watch her eyelids flutter with fatigue. “You need rest,” I say. “And clean clothes.”
She looks down at the hospital scrubs. “These aren’t mine.”
“No.” I guide her toward the bathroom. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
The massive claw-foot tub fills quickly. Steam rises, fogging the mirrors. Juno stands in the center of the room, looking lost as she peers around her. I guess I can’t blame her; she only came here once before it all happened, and just briefly.
“The bath’s ready,” I say, reaching for her hand. She takes mine without resistance, letting me guide her to the edge of the bathtub.
I help her out of the scrubs with clinical efficiency. But there’s nothing clinical about the way my heart pounds when I see her body—unchanged, perfect, alive when I watched her burn on a pyre.
I help her into the tub, supporting her weight as she sinks into the water. She sighs, eyes closing. Her body trembles slightly against my hands, and I feel a knot form in my throat. Days ago, I saw flames consume her. Now she’s here, flesh and blood, warm beneath my fingertips.
“This feels good,” she murmurs, not showing any sign of self-consciousness about being naked in front of me. But there’s none of the sensuality from before, either. Just a simple acceptance that being like this is perfectly natural. Which is odd because it’s pretty clear that she doesn’t know who I am.
That should upset me. It doesn’t. All that matters is that she’s here with me, where she belongs. We’ll deal with the other stuff later.
I swirl the water over her, carefully running an eye over her soft curves and pale limbs. There’s no sign of injury, not a hint of the catastrophic damage that killed her. She’d been crushed beneath that pillar, but there isn’t a single sign of it now. Her skin is smooth, unblemished. Perfect. It’s just her mind that seems to have been impacted.
When I move away to reach for the bodywash, her eyes flash open, alarm in their pale depths. I kneel beside the tub, soapy washcloth in hand. I stroke her hair.
“I’ve got you,” I reassure her. My voice sounds rough, like I’ve been screaming for hours. Maybe I have been, in my head, since I watched the light fade from her eyes.
I bathe her with reverent care, washing away dirt and the lingering scent of fire. Fingers, wrists, arms shoulders, the contours of her torso, her belly. Every inch of her skin goes pink under my painstaking attention. My hands move methodically, afraid to linger too long in any one place, afraid to believe this is real.
Her hair, when I wash it, still smells faintly of rosemary beneath the ash. That familiar scent—from the little herb garden she kept on her apartment windowsill—takes me back to a time before the grief, a time I thought I’d lost forever.
She watches me through half-lidded eyes. “You loved me,” she says suddenly. Not a question.
My hand stills on her shoulder. “Iloveyou,” I correct. “Still.” Present tense. Always.
I don’t ask her to say the words back to me. I don’t need her to. Right now, this is enough. Having her here. As if the nightmare was just that… a bad dream. And now it’s over. But it still feels fragile, as if I push too hard, I’ll find myself back in that dark place. Because maybe this is the dream, and the nightmare is my reality.
When I’m satisfied that she’s clean, I help her from the tub, wrapping her in the largest towel I own. She leans against me, sagging slightly on unsteady legs. I stay like that for a moment, my arms around her, my chin on the top of her head, just drinking her in.
In the bedroom, I dry her hair with the towel, examining the impossibly golden curls that weave around my fingers. I don’t care that it looks different; I know it’s still her. When it’s tumbling around her shoulders, I find her a soft T-shirt of mine and a pair of boxers with a drawstring. They swallow her, but she clutches the fabric to her like armor.
“I’m so tired,” she whispers.
“Sleep,” I tell her, guiding her to the bed. “I’ll be right here.”
She crawls under the covers, eyelids already drooping. “I don’t know who I am,” she murmurs as sleep claims her. “But I know you’re mine.”
The words take my breath away. When I try to find my voice, I can’t, so I say nothing, just lean forward and brush my lips over her forehead. Her skin is warm. Very warm. But smooth as silk.
I stroke a strand of hair from her face and adjust the comforter over her. She gives a small sigh, nuzzling into the pillow, her lips curving up slightly. When she exhales a deep breath, her entire body relaxes, the tension seeping out of her.
“Rest, stargazer,” I whisper, still stroking her hair. I stay just like that, hovering over her until I sense sleep taking over. ThenI sink into the chair beside the bed, watching her chest rise and fall with each breath. My phone vibrates—Caleb, no doubt, with questions I can’t answer. I silence it without looking.
Nothing matters but this. Her. Alive.
