Instead of answering, I lift my hips.
He pulls the wet panties off, reaching under the shirt to get to them, then sliding them down my legs. Along with the towel, he takes them into the bathroom.
When he returns, I’m yawning. He pulls the bedcovers over me and tucks me in.
He bends and kisses me on the forehead. Then he returns to the leather chair in the corner and sits down, folding his hands over his stomach and closing his eyes.
“Mal?”
“What?”
“Were you really going to kill me?”
He doesn’t answer. I take his silence as a yes. I yawn again, nestling down against the pillow, snug and clean and exhausted.
I fall asleep with my silent assassin caretaker watching over me, keeping me safe.
This time when I dream of gunfire, he’s there to protect me with a shield and a flaming sword.
28
Riley
For the next few days, Mal is strangely silent. He doesn’t leave me alone again. Whenever I wake up, he’s in the room, sitting in the leather chair, watching me.
He helps me take short walks around the cabin, letting me lean on his arm as I wince and shuffle.
He takes my temperature, cooks my meals and feeds them to me, gives me water and medicine, and helps me in and out of bed when I have to use the bathroom.
When I ask him why he doesn’t own a television, he shakes his head. When I ask how anyone can live without a computer, he sighs. He rebuffs almost all my attempts at conversation, especially if it has anything to do with his lifestyle or something personal about him.
On day four of the silent treatment, he asks out of the blue if I’d like to take another bath.
“Yes,” I say, relieved he’s finally back from wherever he went inside his head. “I’d like that very much.”
Looking pensive, he nods.
He’s sitting on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees and his hands hanging down, staring at the rug. It’s dark outside. All the candles in the cabin are lit, giving it a warm, homey glow.
When he doesn’t move or say anything else, I ask tentatively, “Did you mean now?”
As an answer, he rises, goes into the bathroom, and turns on the bathtub faucet. He comes back and picks me up in his arms.
I don’t argue that I should be walking. He’s not in the mood for my sass, that much I can tell. I just let him carry me into the bathroom and undress me, feeling hideously self-conscious again but trusting now that he won’t make it more awkward for me than it already is.
When I’m lying in the water and his hands are in my hair, he starts to speak to me again in Russian, like he did the last time he gave me a bath.
He talks and talks, his voice low, the cadence of the foreign words hypnotizing.
There’s emotion in his tone, but it’s not anger. If anything, it seems like the opposite. Like he’s trying to get me to understand something of vital importance to him.
I want to ask him what, but I don’t.
I know he won’t answer.
When he’s rinsed me, dried me off, and put another of his huge clean shirts over my head, he announces it’s time for my stitches to come out.
“Oh. Okay. Do I have to go to a hospital for that?”
The look he gives me is insulted. He picks me up and brings me back to bed.
He fluffs the pillow under my head, pulls the sheets up to cover my crotch, lifts the shirt up to just under my breasts, and peels off the bandage. From a drawer in the nightstand, he removes large tweezers and a pair of surgical scissors, both wrapped in plastic.
Anxiety blooms over my skin like a rash. “Is this going to hurt?”
“No. You’ll feel a tug or two, but that’s all.”
I nod, knowing that he’d tell me if it was going to be painful.
He opens the tools, cleans them with a gauze pad and a sharp-smelling liquid from a brown bottle, then leans over me and goes to work.
After a moment, he says, “You’ve healed well. This scar won’t be bad.”
I’ve resisted looking at the wound until now, so that’s a relief to hear. When I lift my head and peek down at my uncovered stomach, however, the relief evaporates, replaced instantly by disgust.
“Not bad? It’s hideous!”
“You’re exaggerating again.”
“I’m Frankenstein! Look at that gash! It’s a foot long! And why the hell is it shaped like a lightning bolt? Had the surgeon been drinking?”
“He had to go around your belly button.”
“Couldn’t he have made a crescent moon? I look like Harry fucking Potter, times ten!”