“And I told you once before, it will come off when I’m ready to take it off.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Because I need you to keep your shit together if we’re going to get the bastards who killed Mateo and branded you.”

I took in his words, studying him, his face, his eyes. He gestured once more to the tub and released my wrist when I climbed in. And I remembered something.

“You have a daughter.”

He stopped, as if that were the last thing he expected me to say. Then he nodded once and brought over a bottle of body wash and a washcloth. He sat on the edge of the tub, dipped the cloth inside, and rung it out before squeezing body wash onto it. He began to lather my neck and back.

“Effie. She’s eleven now.”

His face looked so sad right then. It was like the man I’d glimpsed last night, the one who hurt. The broken one.

“I haven’t seen her in a long time. Almost seven years.”

“Why?”

He looked at me, and for a moment, I thought he was going to say something other than what he said, but then, as if he’d just given himself over to it, the truth came out.

“Because I’m a coward.”

He dropped my gaze, dipped the washcloth into the water, and brought it back to me.

“She’s better off anyway.”

“What happened that night?”

He knew the night I meant. There was no other night.

“I shot my brother,” he said flatly. “I almost killed him.”

He refused to look at me. I reached for his hand the next time he dipped the cloth into the water and held it, then reached up to cup his face, seeing the scratches I’d left yesterday, thinking I should have bandaged them for him.

Dominic met my gaze, the look in his eyes strange, dark…empty. As if he’d used the last seven years to create a gap so wide, a hole so big, he’d never be able to cross the chasm.

He shook my hand off and resumed washing me, his attention wholly on that as he spoke.

“Don’t misunderstand, Gia. I’m not good. Being a father doesn’t make me good. Missing my daughter doesn’t make me good. When I say she’s better off, I mean it. I know myself. I know what I’ve done, what I am. I know what I’m capable of.”

He hated himself. I’d accused him of that very thing in the beginning, and it was more true than I’d realized then. And some part of me, hell, not some part, not any part. My heart…it broke for him.

“Tell me about that night,” I said after a while, once he’d started shampooing my hair.