Page 40 of Unclench Me Softly

“I unclenched my need to know everything,” he says finally. “To figure people out before they show me who they are.”

He leans forward, elbows on knees, and adds, “It’s harder than it sounds. Trusting that what’s revealed is real.”

I can’t look away.

I feel like I’m being confessed to and seduced and interrogated, all at once, by a man who hasn’t even moved.

“Thank you,” I say, voice too soft, too shaky.

The steam is heavy now. The air thick with eucalyptus and unspoken longing.

I rise. “I’ll leave you here for a few more minutes,” I whisper. “Let yourselves soften.”

I turn to go, slowly, my towel clinging to my thighs like a betrayal.

Before I step out, I pause, just for a breath, and glance back.

Five men. Bare, glistening, open in ways I didn’t expect and wasn’t prepared for.

And me. Totally, completely unclenched.

I stumble out of the steam dome like I’ve just returned from a war fought entirely in eye contact and eucalyptus.

The air hits me like a slap of sanity. Cool, sharp, pine-laced. I practically collapse against the nearest tree, pressing my forehead to the bark like it might absolve me for whatever spiritual crime I just committed by hosting five half-naked men in a sacred sauna of intimacy and suppressed moaning.

My towel is hanging on for dear life. I am moist, mentally disoriented, and at least three chakra levels too open.

I fumble for my phone and open the group chat like it’s a medical emergency.

ME:

okay

emergency debrief

i may have just spiritually climaxed in a steam dome

CALLIE:

omfg

did you die in there??

was it as hot as i imagine

emotionally or physically

ME:

hotter

everyone was glistening and vulnerable and saying things like “i let go of trust” while looking at me

jonah just sat there breathing and i saw god

CALLIE:

screaming

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