Adler (The Henchmen MC 14)

Maybe I could get her in a bath.

She'd barely know I was gone then.

As she finished stripping, I turned, and did just that, tossing the weird colored ball thing in the water too, watching it fizz up.

"I hate baths," she objected, tone passionless.

"Humor me," I asked, holding her hand to help her in. "I'll be ten minutes," I promised, kissing her temple. "Scrub-a-dub," I added before walking out, loading all the shite into one of the brown bags from the takeout, and heading to deal with everything.

It ended up being twenty, and when I got back, she was sitting off the side of a tub in a towel, her damp hair around her shoulders dripping a bit down her chest.

"Where's the gun?" she asked, not looking up.

"Buried at the bottom of the ocean most likely by now."

"My clothes?"

"In a washing machine at a laundromat. Bleached to fuckin' hell. No one will think twice about it. I've left clothes in countless laundromats over the years. Someone'll toss 'em or keep 'em. Won't get back to us."

"Okay," she agreed, looking down at her hands, making my gaze go there as well, finding them bloodied.

"The fuck'd ya do?" I asked, closing the few feet between us, kneeling down to take her hand into both of mine, examining the way she had ripped up the skin under her nail beds.

"Scraped my nails."

"Scraped, duchess, not fucking claw the skin off."

There was a pause before she spoke, words small. "I didn't want any part of him touching me," she admitted.

Ah.

My hand raised, snagging her chin, dragging it up, waiting for her eyes to find mine. "He can never touch ya again, Lou."

And that was it.

The dam broke.

And the water surged.

It seemed fed from some underground source, endless, overflowing.

I reached out, pulling her to my chest right there on the floor, not exactly sure how one went about comforting a crying woman, but wanting to attempt it regardless.

My hands stroked up her spine as her body quaked with oddly silent sobs, her tears soaking through my shirt, hands clutched into the material at my shoulders.

They moved up to sift through her hair until it was nearly dry as the tears seemed to slow, met by a chorus of sniffles and hiccups as she attempted to regain some semblance of control.

"Ya never cried about it," I assumed as I pulled her into my arms, getting onto numb feet, trying to ignore the stabbing pins and needles as I walked on numb legs to the bedroom, lowering us both down.

"Not since the night on the roof," she admitted. "Things kept happening so fast. And then, I guess, the tears just turned into anger. And stayed that way over the years."

I took a deep breath, watching as she did the same. "It's done now," I said, watching as her lips thinned as she pressed them together. "Ya gonna get the last one filled in?" I asked, running a finger over her arm.

"Yeah," she agreed, exhaling hard.

"What?"

"What if I break down in the chair?" she asked, the very idea of it making her face fill with horror.

"Paine's got himself a wife and a daughter. And two sisters. And a ma. I'm sure he's seen all sorts of cryin' over the years."

"What am I supposed to do now?" she asked, a question I wonder if she had ever thought before.

"Ya chase yer skips. Ya cook for me. Ya take down that creepy stalker shite in yer bedroom. Ya walk Linny. Hang with the girls. Sleep with me. Ya move on, duchess."

"Moving on sounds good," she admitted in a small voice.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," she confirmed, snuggling closer.

Snuggling.

Closer.

This was Lou we were talking about here.

Lou couldn't really be called a snuggle closer kinda girl. Except when sex was involved.

Maybe this had changed things.

The weight being lifted.

The anger being purged.

Letting me see her in her weak moment.

Maybe it took what shields were left up for her, and knocked them the fuck down.

My arm went around her, curling her tight to me, feeling an odd, warm, swelling sensation in my chest, something I couldn't name, something I had no way of understanding, but something deep within me said it was right, that it was not something to fear, to fight, to rage against. It was something to give into, to let overtake me, to become familiar.

"Adler?"

"Yeah, duchess?"

There was a short pause before she blurted it out.

"I'm hungry."

Unprepared for something so normal, so light, so like the Lou I had gotten to know over the past few months, I couldn't stop the laugh that burst out of me, deep, long, genuinely happy.

"What?" she asked, pushing up on my chest to glare down at me, her hair falling like a curtain around her face, catching the light from the nightstand.

"Nothin'," I told her, swiping a finger over the darkening bruise on her cheek as her brow rose. "It's just nice to hear ya bein' normal," I admitted.