Page 26 of Chaos

His shoulders lift in a shrug so big, the chaise we’re sitting on rocks, like he’s Atlas, and his shrug moved the whole world.

“I haven’t brushed my teeth in a month, and I smell like I have gangrene.” I tug my hand from the bowl and try to sit up. “Can you … take my clothes off? I need to get clean. How long has it been?”

“Twenty-nine days.” He capitulates with a grunt and commences pulling off my filthy jeans.

They’re disgusting. Stained dark brown with blood, stiff with dust.Filthy.Scraggle’s voice echoes in my mind.Like rotting meat.

Yorke hurls them across the room like they mortally offended him.

I stare at my scrawny legs, knobby knees, bony ankles, all the muscles I worked so hard to grow last summer, gone. I look emaciated. “Was anyone killed finding me?”

“Just focus on healing. Everything will be fine.”

He says it with an edge like if he thinks it hard enough it’ll be true, like we can brute-force the chaos of the world back into order.

My brain immediately flickers to the moment Ben shot Ruby and left her dead on the forest floor, then to when he lifted the hammer and smashed Shane’s hand. And again when Auden got a cold back in DC.

How long do you keep sayingit’ll be finebefore you accept that it’s not?

With a baby maybe on the way?

“Frankie,” Yorke says softly. “Talk to me?”

“Not … not yet.” I reach for the bucket he was using to clean my hands, find a wash cloth inside, bring it to my neck and start scrubbing.

Life is a tiltawhirl now, an out-of-control ride, maniacally twirling in the dark. Nothing is predictable, nothing is clear. Nothing but Yorke. And somehow, the worst fear I had in the cellar comes back to hit me—what if I never see him again. The fact that he’s here should be reassuring, but all I can remember is that horrible, soul-sucking fear I felt. What if all this happens and he dies? Ben said he’d do it like it was the soul reason he lived.

I can’t do it.

My head starts shaking rapidly from side-to-side. It feels manic, even to me. “Just …” I gesture at the bucket, at my filthy body. “Just help me wash it all off. I have to wash it off.”

“Alright,” he says softly in the tone of someone speaking to a scared animal and moves the bucket closer to me.

I hold the IV tape steady and slide the needle from my arm carefully, then pull myself to my feet moving like I’ve aged six decades.

He makes a chiding sound with his tongue, but doesn’t comment as he steadies me and rolls away the IV pole. The clattering wheels echo as I find a bar of soap in the water and work it into a lather.

Silently, he brings over a fresh bucket, massive in his boots, filling up space like a stormtrooper as he pours the dirty water down the drain, helps me lather shampoo into my hair, rinses it out, and then lathers it again. And again.

He carefully uses a cloth to clean my forehead around my cuts, using soap and water, then hydrogen peroxide.

And then somehow, he’s naked too, bare before me and I know it’s to reassure me, so I’m not the only one exposed. Smooth skin and crinkly hair, bare toes beside mine on the bubbly tiles, as he hands over a toothbrush, already loaded with toothpaste. Soap is smeared across his chest, water dripping down his abs.

I brush my teeth three times, spitting and rinsing it away down the drain, avoiding looking at his penis because when I do, I remember Scraggle’s nasty little pink worm.

When I’m done, I clean under my toenails and the fingernails I haven’t lost, all of which need to be clipped.

Yorke lifts the buckets, one after another, refilling them at the pool, and pouring them over my head, washing it all away until I’m shiny and can’t find anywhere left to scrub, and the only thing I smell of is his fresh rosemary-and-pine soap and peppermint toothpaste.

My head has cleared, either the stupor of sleep wearing off or medicine kicking in.

That’s when I finally look at him again.

He’s standing close to me, a bucket loose at his side. He’s lost weight too, his shoulder bones are sharp ridges, the ripples of ribs show under his chest, his abdominal muscles are rigidly sharp, cast in the light like a Chiaroscuro painting. Brows draw together, taking me in, just waiting for me to give him a sign.

Every single part of him is hard and powerful, except for his eyes when he looks at me, soft and warm in a body made for violence and vengeance.

“Better?” he finally asks, his gaze flitting from my right eye to my left and back again.

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