Goddammit. “I’m thinking.”
He looked startled.
“About?”
“I could use a haircut.”
He said “yeah” and “me too.” He pushed a hand through the thick mop on the top of his head, blond fading darker. He had the beginnings of his own beard, like he hadn’t shaved in a week, but it was scraggly and thin. He was just a fucking kid.
I looked down at the cheap set of clippers I’d picked up at our last stop. “Tell you what,” I said slowly, thinking of a rabbit left at my feet. “You help me, and I’ll help you.”
He shouldn’t have looked so excited over something so meaningless. “Yeah?”
I shrugged. “Might as well.”
He frowned. “But I don’t—I’ve never cut anyone’s hair before.”
I snorted. “Not cutting. Buzzing. Buzz it all off.”
He looked horrified. I almost laughed at him. Almost.
I said, “I’ll go first. And then you can tell me if you want me to do it for you.”
His hands shook a little as I sat on the toilet. His knees bumped against mine. He looked down at me like he couldn’t figure out where to start. “Front to back. Top, and then the sides. We’ll save the back for last.”
He was still unsure.
I remembered his father standing next to me, hand on my shoulder, and I said, “Hey. You don’t have to—”
“I can do this.”
“Then do it.”
His touch was soft at first, tentative. It felt good and safe, almost like it’d been before Kelly was even alive. When pack had meaning, when witches and wolves and hunters hadn’t done all they could to take everything from me. I hated how it felt. I leaned into his touch. It wasn’t sexual, not that I wanted it to be. And I sure as shit wasn’t Thomas Bennett.
But it was something.
He turned the clippers on.
They buzzed near my ear.
Hair fell onto my shoulders, my lap. To the towel on the floor.
He tilted my head forward and backward. To the side. On and on it went.
He saved the back for last, just as I said.
Eventually he turned the clippers off.
I felt lighter.
I brushed a hand over my head, fingers scraping against the barest of stubble.
He took a step back.
I stood.
The man who stared back in the mirror was harder still. The breadth of his chest. The strength in his arms. A thin layer of dark growth across his skull.