And Sophia. She has to go back to Seattle. Like, yesterday.

Just the thought of what I have to do makes me want to head directly downstairs, grab a bottle of Jack from the shelf above the bar, get on my bike and then find somewhere quiet where I can drink myself into a stupor. There was a time when I probably would have done that, but I can’t now. I have a responsibility to the woman quietly tearing herself apart in the shower.

I walk numbly down the hall, take my flick knife out of my back pocket, and then I twist the lock on the bathroom door open from the outside. The room is so full of steam, I can’t see my hand in front of my face.

“Soph? It’s me. It’s Jamie.” I speak loudly, so she knows I’m there. The last thing I want to do is surprise her. “Jesus, have you even got the cold tap turned on, girl? It’s like a sauna in here.” I know why she’s scalding three layers off skin from her body, though. She feels dirty. She can still feel his hands all over her body.

This, sadly, is not the first time I’ve had to take care of a woman who’s been mistreated by a man. It is the first time that I’ve felt like I’m dying myself, though.

From behind the steamed up glass shower screen, I can make out the small shape of Sophia, curled up in the corner of the tiled shower. “Can you…can you just…”

She wants to ask me to go away. She’s trying to ask that of me, but she can’t seem to finish the sentence. I should be a gentleman and give her what she wants. Walk right back out the door, lock it again, and give her the space she craves. But I can’t. Instead, I open the shower door and I climb right in there with her, fully clothed. T-shirt, hoody, jeans, sneakers. I leave it all on. Me stripping off my clothes would be a shitty idea, even though I have zero intention of trying anything on with her.

I’m soaked the instant the stream of boiling water hits me. Sophia looks up at me, arms wrapped tightly around her body, knees drawn up to her chest, and I can tell there are tears running down her face in amongst the beads of water from the shower head. “What are you doing?” she mumbles.

I smile sadly down at her. My throat feels like it’s swelling fucking closed. She looks so small. So vulnerable. She stabbed Raphael eleven times before she drove those scissors into his neck, but to look at her now you wouldn’t think she was capable. I’m really fucking glad she was.

“Just checking in,” I say softly. She doesn’t reply. She leans her forehead against her braced arms, her body shuddering. Fuck. I’ve never felt like this before. I’ve never felt this…useless. Even when Laura went missing, I still felt like I had a purpose: Find her. Bring her home. Apologize. Sophia’s sitting right in front of me, though. I haven’t lost her in the same way I lost Laura. Bringing Sophia home is a different task altogether.

I lean against the wall and slowly slide down it, not making any sudden movements, until I’m sitting on the floor next to her. I don’t touch her. She must hate me. She must blame me. She has every right to. I told her everything would be okay, and it was anything but.

We sit there in silence for a long time, the water feeling hotter and hotter with every passing moment. The skin across Sophia’s shoulder blades turns from a violent scarlet to a bruised looking purple. She doesn’t seem to notice when I slowly adjust the temperature of the water from blisteringly hot to something a little more manageable.

We sit some more.

Eventually, I feel the need to break the silence. “I’m going to drive you home tomorrow,” I say slowly. “I’ll drive you myself.” She doesn’t look at me, but I can feel her tensing, though; I know she must have heard me. “It’s…for the best. I don’t want anything else happening to you. Not because of me. I can’t—I can’t tell you how sorr—”

“You don’t want me anymore.”

I stop talking, turning my head to fully look at her properly. “What?”

“You’re sending me away. You don’t want me anymore,” she says. It’s really hard to hear her over the constant battery of the water against the slate tiles, but I can just about make out what she’s saying.

“No…no, of course I want you, Sophia. Fuck, I…” My heart feels like it’s being stomped on repeatedly every time it beats. How can she think that? How can she honestly think I don’t want her anymore?

“I probably disgust you,” she says.

Oh, god. Being stabbed at Ramirez’s place hurt. Being tasered by Lowell was breathtakingly painful. But this pain? This pain makes me feel like I’m dying. I would hurt less right now if someone took a knife, slammed it into my chest, and twisted with all their might. “You’re crazy if you think that, sugar. You have no idea. I…I am so fucking proud of you.”

Slowly, she raises her head, peering at me sideways, a blank look on her face. Her hair is plastered down her cheeks, her neck, her back in dark, wet streamers. “How? How can you be proud of me? He nearly…”

“Because you defended yourself. You didn’t give in. And he didn’t get what he wanted from you, Soph. You didn’t let him. It takes so much strength to do what you did.” I mean every word. Since I started buying these women from the skin traders, I’ve come across so many girls who were overcome by the dark places they found themselves in. A lot of the time, giving up felt safer than standing their ground. That was how they coped, how they stayed alive. I’m pretty sure giving up wasn’t something that even crossed Sophia’s mind.

“I’m not strong,” she whimpers. “I’m not.”

I want to smash my fists into the wall, but that won’t help her. More violence is the last thing Sophia needs in her life, and so I wrap my arm around her shoulders instead, pulling her to me. “You are the strongest fucking person I know, okay. Don’t you ever fucking doubt that. And you do not disgust me. I fucking love you, okay? I fucking love you.”

It’s as though she finally gives in and breaks all at once. She’s stiff as a board one second, resisting me, and the next she’s crumpling, falling slack, and then climbing into my lap, throwing her arms around my neck, clinging onto me as though her very life depends on it.

Since I raced up to the cabin yesterday, my heart trying to climb up and out of my mouth, I haven’t been able to touch her properly. She’s flinched every time I’ve gone near her. Seems that her reluctance to have any sort of physical contact with me has passed now, though, and I am so fucking relieved I could cry.

“It’s okay, Soph. It’s okay.” I gently stroke my hand over her hair, my eyes clenched tightly shut, and she cries into my soaking wet clothing, fisting my t-shirt in both her hands. When she stops crying and just breathes against me, I turn off the water and wrap a towel around her body, and then I carry her back to the bedroom.

Sleep takes hold of her.

When she wakes up, it’s dark and I tell her I have a job for her. Confusion clouds her face as she looks at the pair of heavy-duty gloves I’m holding out to her.

“Why are you giving me those?” she asks.

“Because digging’s hard work. I doubt your hands are already covered in calluses, sugar.” She doesn’t ask me why she’s going to be digging. She gives me what can only be described as a baleful look, but then takes the gloves and gets dressed in the jeans and sweater I brought down from the cabin for her.

Outside in the courtyard, a huge bonfire is blazing, cracking, spitting, sending burning hot red and orange embers spinning upward into the black night. Cade took a chainsaw to the hanging tree. I couldn’t do it, so he stepped up and got it done. A small crowd of Widow Makers, Brassic included, stand around the fire with beers in their hands. They watch with silent respect as Sophia and I walk by. When she first came here, the guys were dubious of her. New people, especially pretty young women, are always cause for suspicion around these parts. But now she’s not the girl who lead Ramirez back to New Mexico, to our doorstep; she’s the girl who killed Raphael Dela Vega. That will forever earn her kudos with my guys. Even Shay nods her head as we pass. There’s no anger in her eyes tonight. She just looks weary, and I kind of get it. Being as angry and as confrontational as Shay is twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, must be exhausting.