Oh my God. “Vic.” He didn’t move. He didn’t acknowledge I was there, and I wasn’t even sure he was aware that I was.
I put my hand on his back to try to duck under his arm, but as soon as I touched him, he reacted.
With one movement, he had me by the throat and pressed up against the tile. My heart slammed into my chest and my stomach dropped. He stared at me, but his eyes were dark and glazed, and it was as if he was looking right through me.
His fingers didn’t squeeze my throat. He just held me there.
I placed my hand on his forearm. “Vic,” I managed to claw from my throat. “Vic.”
The cold water continued to pound on us, and I shuddered. “Vic!”
His brows furrowed and he looked away from me, then back again as if he was trying to distinguish what he was seeing.
My teeth chattered. “Vic. Please.” His fingers twitched. “It’s me. Let me go, Vic,” I whispered, slowly lowering my hand from his forearm so I wasn’t touching him.
His hand dropped from me. I inhaled several deep breaths, rubbing my throat with my fingers. I reached for the taps and turned the dial to the right for hot water.
“Vic. You’re freezing. You need to warm up,” I said.
He didn’t say anything.
I expected the stream to turn warm, but it didn’t. There was no hot water. Why wasn’t the hot water working? How long had he been in here?
He shook his head, staring down at the drain in the shower. “It was cold. It was so fuckin’ cold. He was shivering.”
What was he talking about? I moved into him, wrapping my arms around his neck and pulling him close, letting the cold water hit my back instead of him.
“He was cold. He was so cold.”
“Vic, let’s get out of the shower.”
He didn’t move.
“I couldn’t save him. I couldn’t save him. I wasn’t strong enough. The rain. It wouldn’t stop raining, and the sewers kept filling up.”
My body was frozen as the water continued to pierce my skin.
“He didn’t want to die. He told me he didn’t want to die. He begged me to save him.” A ravaged sound emerged from his throat. “My brother. My fuckin’ brother.”
Oh God. I pulled his head down, so it was cradled into the crook of my shoulder.
I don’t know how long we stood there. The ice-cold water pounded into my back until I was numb and could no longer feel anything anymore. I shivered, and my teeth chattered so hard that my jaw ached. But there was no way I was leaving him here.
His spine stiffened and he shook his head as if to clear it. “Macayla?” He scowled, looking at me as if I wasn’t real.
“Can… we get… out now?” I managed to get past my quivering lips.
“Jesus Christ, baby.” He moved fast, hooking his arm around my waist and yanking me out of the shower, nearly sending us both tumbling to the floor. “What the hell are you doing?”
He ripped a towel from the rack so hard, it tore off the wall. He wrapped the towel around me before grabbing another one and wrapping it around his waist. Then he picked me up in his arms and carried me over to bed, but it was only to grab the black-and-white wool blanket at its foot.
My teeth were chattering so badly, I couldn’t say anything. And my body was numb.
He carried me down the stairs to the living room and sat me on the white faux fur rug in front of the wood-burning stove. He tucked the wool blanket around me before straightening and opening the door to the stove. He grabbed several logs and tossed them into the glowing bed of coals that almost immediately ignited them, sending flames into a frenzy and heat to pour out.
My body trembled and shook, but the sudden intense heat felt good on my face.
“Baby,” Vic whispered as he came up behind me and sat with his legs on either side of me so we were spooned together. He wrapped the wool blanket around us and pulled me even closer.