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He shampooed it three times before he seemed to think it was enough.

After he’d rinsed off all of the soap and turned off the water, he wrapped me in one of our big towels. He steered me into the other room, his hands still light on my shoulders and back, but holding a denser purpose again.

I felt better. A lot better.

But yeah, still pretty weird.

Now it felt like I was supposed to talk to him.

I wasn’t sure how, or if I had anything to say. I wondered if he’d let me sleep first, but when he sat down next to me on the bed, wearing nothing but a towel around his waist, he didn’t lay down, or move in such a way that would have made it easy for me to lay down. I would have had to climb over him to reach the other side of the bed.

I didn’t, though.

I could feel him wanting to talk to me, so I just waited.

After another pause, he motioned for me to turn around, and I realized he was holding one of those spiky brushes for my hair.

I just sat there while he combed the tangles out of my long hair.

I was thinking again––as well as I could. That pain had come back to my chest, but everything else still felt pretty numb. Maybe that’s why it seemed like a good idea to try to talk to him then, before the rest of my light came back for real.

“I need to sleep,” I told him, facing the wall as he sat behind me.

He didn’t answer.

Feeling that pain in my chest worsen, I exhaled, fighting to think about what to say, the words that had been in my head off and on for the past few days.

“I’m sorry I left,” I told him.

He stopped brushing my hair. He didn’t say anything, so I swallowed, still not looking back at him.

“I’ll do whatever you want, Revik. I just…” I fought to think. “I don’t know how to… end this.”

“End what?” he asked.

I glanced back at him. “This,” I said, at a loss. “This… thing I created. Leaving like I did.”

He only looked at me. He wore his infiltrator mask.

“You think that’s the problem?” he asked. “That you left?”

I looked down at his body, at the dark towel he wore around his waist. I had a sudden urge to ask him to turn around, so I could see his back, so I could look at what Ullysa had done to him. I didn’t, though.

Instead I looked up, meeting his gaze.

“I want to talk about it,” I told him. “Just not now.”

“Talk about what?” he asked. “What do you think we need to talk about, Allie?”

I blinked. I looked down at his chest, thinking about his back again. Not wanting him to hear my thoughts, I shook my head, bringing my eyes back up to his face.

“Maybe she could show me,” I said finally. “Next time, I mean. Maybe I could go, and she could show me how. We could talk about that.”

Pain flickered over his expression.

It seemed to hit him without warning––intensely enough that he winced, looking away from me. I felt him fight to control it, right before it worsened. After a few more seconds, when he didn’t speak, I laid a hand on his thigh over the towel.

“Revik,” I said. “It’s all right.”