Page 54 of Dirty Salvation

Wouldn't he have preferred that to what he was seeing?

His broken girl.

Goddammit, she was not fine.

It was as though all her masks had crumbled and she was suffering with the aftermath beneath the spray of water where no one could hear her cries.

He took the necessary steps, used the flat of his hand to slide the shower door open. Despite the water being hell hot, the heat even making Rider recoil back a little, she was shivering, shaking in her own skin and bones.

She'd been lovely and curvy that one night together, each curve Rider had traced with his tongue and fingertips, he'd branded her on his brain until she'd festered there for months, years, each woman he'd been with afterward had been measured to Zara and came up short, to see her a fragile thing letting the beat of water batter her hair flat, cascading over bones barely encased in paper thin skin, such a fucking shadow of her former self...his gut wrenched.

She was muttering to herself, words he didn't catch until he leaned forward.

"Can't get clean." Her tone was full of despair.

The noise tugged at Rider, unable to do anything but watch her vicious scrubs going over her belly, her small breasts with such dispassionate care for herself she was turning severely red, bumps rising on her tender skin.

Not pausing to think about it, he only had one fucking thought and that was stopping her vicious self -mistreatment when he started shucking his clothes, toed off his boots, leaving them in a pile behind him and he stepped into the small shower stall crowding her back against the far wall, water beat his back facing her, protecting her some from the heavy pelt of steam.

It was as if Rider wasn't even there, Zara continued with her unguarded ministrations scrubbing so hard on her arms blotches of blood under her skin could visibly be seen.

Oh, sweet baby, don't.

"No, baby. Icy-baby, quit that, you're gonna peel your skin off." he took her hands in his, stalling the next sweep of violence over her chest. Only then did her owl eyes look up and finally notice Rider.

Even then her eyes were clouded with her pain.

He thought her so strong, she'd been coping, he'd thought wrong.

So completely wrong.

Zara was a broken doll hidden behind her quiet veneer.

Tears were spilling over her beautiful eyes, ripping pain through Rider. He lifted those same hands causing untold pain to herself and kissed each fingertip

"No, baby, this isn't the way."

He didn't know what was. But scraping the skin from her body was not it.

He wanted to kill a motherfucker for this.

"I need. I need. I need to get clean, Rider. I can't. Can't.Can't. It just won't come off me, it’s in there, I can’t---- It's stained. I tried. Itriedto get it off me. Why won’t it come off me, Rider? All that dirt in me, please, do you see it in me? I have to get it out, I can feel it, it hurts."

As her voice cracked so did Rider's heart, a straight up slash to his organ that was beating harder by the second. He resolved then to do what he had to do to help Zara. Reaching behind her he hooked up the pink bottle of shower soap, squirting a big dollop into his palm and in a voice, that didn't sound like his own, gentle... he told her.

"Shhh, Zara. I got you. I'm here now. I'll clean you. Stand still for me, baby, that's the way, I got you, let me wash it all off you."

If he thought she'd refuse, realize he was standing naked in the shower with her and kick him out, it never came.

The brave lion heart of a girl of the past few days shivered beneath the spray of water, a ghost of the self she'd presented, and waited docilely with her eyes so round and raw for Rider to draw his soaped hands over her body. Her trauma was catching up; she was looking down at her bare arms as though she could physically see something embedded into her skin.

If he felt an ounce of protective instincts towards Zara before then they just quadrupled and shot to the fucking moon. His chest burned with the urge to take care of whatever she needed from him.

He’d wash his girl to assuage that need she had and try to think of ways to help her long term. She’d need it from professionals, he determined, because he was clueless and as much as murdering someone would help him, for Zara it was not so effective.

With his own heart rapping against his ribs, his face drawn down to contained grimness, he reached out, hooked up the half bottle of shower gunk again, dumping a giant dollop into the middle of his palm.

He started at her left arm, never leaving a part of her cream skin and dotted freckles unattended, under her pit, along to her fingers, taking each one he rubbed delicately as if she was a precious little thing in need of much care and attention.