After we come down from our high, Ryan goes to the bathroom. He returns with a warm washcloth and starts to clean me up. I can’t explain why, but from the way he concentrates on the task, it feels like this is important to him. When he’s done, he tosses the cloth into my hamper, then lies down and pulls me against him. We slip into a deep sleep together, holding each other close the whole night.

Chapter 17

Ryan

When Scarlett and I met, she was a spitfire. On our first two dates—which were a month apart because she wasn’t sure she wanted to see me again—we spent half the time trying to one-up each other with literary knowledge and the other half making out like teenagers. Over the course of the two years of the rest of our relationship, I think I saw her cry twice, and neither of those times were the waterworks that explode from her when she crumples onto the floor in a literal puddle of bath water and tears in the hallway outside her bathroom.

By the time I walked out of that bathroom, I knew I had crossed a line. The flush of my overheated skin and the hardness between my legs were clear signals, and even though I knew leaving right then and there was probably the best thing for everyone involved, I sat down on the couch to wait for her, as if touching her hair and imagining her curves below those bubbles had caused my body to act on its own.

But the look on Scarlett’s face when she flew out of the bathroom, her threadbare robe clinging to those curves that had only existed in my memory, was thankfully enough to spur me into action.

“Oh, shit.” I jump to my feet as her ass hits the ground. “Scarlett, what happened?”

Huge, aching sobs are wrenched from her throat. That’s the only way to describe the sound—it’s as if she’s having an out-of-body experience, the entirety of her pain and emotion being sucked out of her with each cry.

I drop to the ground next to her and pull her close. She doesn’t even resist; she just folds herself into me and presses her cheek to my chest. The warm water from her hair blooms over my sweater, soaking through to my skin. I wrap my arms around her and hold on tight as waves of sobs crash out of her.

I don’t know how long we sit like this. All I know is that when I exited the bathroom, the sun was just starting to set, and by the time her sobs have calmed to more manageable sniffles and the occasional gasp, it’s almost completely dark outside.