Page 22 of The Tex Hex (Bitches With Stitches #3)

MANDY

From the moment I close the bathroom door, I feel like I can finally breathe. The lock clicks into place, and the small room becomes my sanctuary. For a second, I just stand there, leaning on the counter, psyching myself up for this.

The steam begins to cloud the glass almost immediately. Good. I don’t want to see my face.

My scars are a roadmap of everything I’ve been through, and I know I should be proud, but all I see is a stranger. Someone I don’t want him to see.

The stitches pull at my cheek as I peel off my clothes, careful around the bandages. I step into the shower like I’m expecting to be jumpscared, one foot at a time, bracing against the wall as the hot water hits me.

It stings. I grit my teeth and bear it, like always, and adjust the temp, making it a bit cooler against my sensitive skin.

The water reaches tepid, and it’s soothing, until it hits one of the tender spots near my stitches. I hiss through my teeth and shift, reaching awkwardly for the shampoo. The bottle slips, clattering loudly in the tub.

“Mandy?!” Tex’s voice cuts through the door. “What was that?”

“Nothing!” I call back, wincing as I bend to grab the bottle. “I’m fine.”

“Are you sure? That didn’t sound fine.” His voice gets louder, closer.

“I said I’m fine!” The door handle jiggles. My heart kicks up.

“Open the door,” he says firmly. “I’ve got clean towels. Let me in.”

He’s got to be fucking kidding if he thinks I’m unlocking that door.

“I’m good,” I call, trying to keep the tremor out of my voice. “Just… give me a minute.” Silence. Then another knock. “I said I’ve got it!”

A pause. “Come on, Big Guy. Don’t be ridiculous. I’m trying to help.”

“I don’t need your help!” I snap, louder than I mean to. “Just… go away, Tex.”

“You’re seriously locking me out right now? That’s so childish.”

“I’m not a damn child! I can take a shower without a babysitter!”

“Mandy, don’t mess with me right now. Open the damn door.”

“I said no!” My voice rises, panic clawing its way into my throat. “I’ve got this. Just go away.”

There’s a beat of silence, then a low growl. “You’re unbelievable, you know that? You’re in there with stitches and grafts and barely healed skin, and you’re locking me out like a damn teenager? What happens if you fall? If you?—”

My last painkiller was four hours ago. I’m not feeling lightheaded whatsoever. “I’m not gonna fall! Jesus, Tex, I’m fine! ”

“Fine my ass,” he snaps. “I heard you grunt like you were wrestling a bear. You’re not fooling me.” There’s a dull thud against the door, like he’s leaning on it—or testing it. “Open up, Big Guy. I’m serious.”

“You’re not coming in here!” My voice cracks. I reach for the towel on the hook and clutch it tightly around my chest, even though the door’s still locked. “Just leave me alone!”

Another pause. Then, “Goddammit, Mandy,” and the next thing I know, the door shudders under his weight. “You’re seriously locking me out? That’s so childish! ”

“Don’t you dare?—”

The door bursts open, slamming into the wall, and Tex stumbles inside. His eyes are blazing, his hair sticking up, and his chest is heaving like he just won a fight.

But then his gaze shifts to me, and freezes.

I flinch back, clutching the towel tighter, every nerve in my body screaming. “Get out!” I yell, my voice too high, too sharp. “Tex, get out!”

But he doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Just stares, his lips parting, his expression softening in a way that makes me want to punch a hole in the wall and crawl inside it. Because I know what that look means.

I knew it.

“Get out!” I shout, fumbling to get out of the shower. My hip clips the sink. Pain shoots down my leg, but I barely feel it through the white-hot panic. “Tex, get out! ”

“You locked the door! Are you kidding me, Mandy? What, were you just gonna slip in the tub and bleed out alone?”

“I wasn’t—I’m fine. I told you I had it!”

“You’re naked and dizzy and recovering from surgery, ” he yells, throwing his arms out. “You think this is fine?”

I try to back up, towel clutched to my chest, but there’s nowhere left to go. He’s staring. He’s seeing .

The grafts on my thigh. The scar tissue curling around my bicep.

The patchwork on my shoulder, where skin was borrowed from one place to fix another.

The twisted seam running low across my back, and—God—he saw the one on my ass, too, where they borrowed skin to repair my arm. Every ruined, misshapen inch of me.

And then it happens.

He flinches.

It’s small. Barely perceptible. His lips part, breath catches, and his eyes go soft. Not in disgust—I see it even as I misread it—but I can’t stop my brain from twisting it up anyway.

My stomach drops. “Don’t,” I say, voice raw. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Mandy—”

“You flinched. I saw it.” My chest heaves, the towel shaking in my fists. “Don’t try to act like you didn’t.”

He takes a step forward, cautiously, like he’s approaching a wounded animal. Maybe I am. “That wasn’t… what you think it was.”

“You don’t have to lie. It’s okay. I know what I look like.”

“Mandy,” he says again, and this time his voice cracks. “I flinched because I hurt for you. Not because of how you look. Because I can’t even imagine what you’ve been through, and I hate that you were alone for so much of it.”

I can’t breathe. My knees start to buckle, and I catch the edge of the sink, the ceramic cool under my fingers. I want to scream. I want to punch a wall. I want to disappear.

I don’t even recognize the sounds coming out of me anymore. They’re raw and wet, like I’ve been split open from the inside. I’m shivering, and I don’t know if it’s from the steam, the cold, or what’s clawing its way through my chest like it wants out.

“Leave!” I shout. “Go—get out of here!”

But Tex doesn’t budge. He’s calm. Calm like only he can be when I’m falling apart. His voice is steady when he says, “I’m not going anywhere.”

My towel’s slipping. My body’s burning. Not from pain, but from shame. From the way his eyes see too much, feel too much. I try to warn him, try to give him one last chance to run before I unravel completely. “I’m about to lose my shit,” I seethe, “and I don’t want you to be here to see it.”

“Wild horses couldn’t drag me away,” he answers, like it’s nothing. Like this is what he does—watches people come undone.

“Tex, please, ” I beg. And I hate that it comes out like that. Small. Weak. Exposed.

He only steps closer. “What kind of man would I be if I left?”

I can’t answer. I don’t have one.

“What kind of man would you think I am,” he adds, “if I left you here, like this? Alone? Hurting?”

“I guess we’re gonna find out,” I whisper.

He reaches for me and I cringe.

“Don’t—” My voice cracks. “Don’t touch me. I hate this—I hate myself.” My hands claw through my hair. “I hate my skin. I hate my head, full of memories and things I can’t forget. I wish—God, I wish—I could be anybody else. Anybody but me.”

He freezes, hand halfway out. Then slowly— slowly —he lowers it.

“There’s nobody else I would rather you be,” Tex says softly. “You’re really the only person I can stand.”

And that breaks something deep. Something I didn’t know was still holding together.

I drop. Just sink to my knees on the damp bathmat, the towel barely hanging on, the steam curling around me like it’s trying to hide me from myself.

I wish it fucking would.

The first tear lands on my thigh. The second hits the tile. The third is buried in a choked sob.

Tex steps around me to shut off the water and drops to the floor with me, wrapping arms around himself because he’s holding back too… until he’s not.

And now we’re both crying. Fucking great.

“I’m a mess,” I gasp, voice cracking. “Why the hell would you want someone like me?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Tex fires back without hesitation, like it’s the easiest question in the world.

“You may not see it, but you’re?—”

“Don’t.” I cut him off before he can say it. “Don’t say it. Don’t say something stupid like I’m beautiful and my scars are invisible.”

Tex huffs— chuffs, really—and shakes his head like I’m being ridiculous.

“Of course they’re not invisible,” he says.

“Anybody can fucking see them. And no, I’m not gonna say some Hallmark-card bullshit like your scars are beautiful.

” He leans in, eyes intense, voice low. “You know what? You’re fucking badass.

You’re brave. If it were me, what you went through? I don’t think I could’ve survived it.”

“I’m not brave,” I snap. “I’m a fucking mess. I can’t even go to the goddamn doctor without a grown man holding my hand. I’m—I’m?—”

“You’re brave ,” he cuts in again, fiercer now. “I’m not wrong.”

I open my mouth to argue, but he barrels on.

“So what if you don’t like doctors? After what they did to you, after everything you’ve been through, why would you?

I get it, Mandy. You think you’re alone in that shit, but you’re not.

You think I don’t understand, but I do. I have a fucking panic attack every time someone tries to touch my dick. ”

That stuns me. He’s never said it out loud before.

His voice softens, but the raw honesty in it is sharper than any yell.

“I get it. Those are demons. That’s what trauma does. Nobody understands that like I do. The way you feel about yourself, inside, when no one’s looking? I get it, Mandy. That mirror in your head lies to you. Just like mine lies to me.”

He pauses. The silence between us is thick. Tense. Real.

“You think that when I look at you, I’m supposed to be disgusted. Or revolted. Or worse, like I pity you or some shit.”

My eyes burn, but I keep listening.

“I don’t fucking pity you,” Tex says. “Yeah, my heart breaks for you, but not because I think you’re weak or damaged. It breaks because I love you. Because I care. If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t give a fuck what happened to you. You’d be just another guy with a sad story.”

His voice wavers, and I finally look at him. Really look.

“You just… You can’t understand why your scars don’t bother me,” he says.

“Just like I can’t understand why you’d want to touch me.

Why you’d think I’m beautiful.” He wipes his face roughly.

“Because in my head? My head tells me you should be disgusted by me. That I’m used up.

Dirty. That I’m trash. That I didn’t deserve to wear the uniform.

That I don’t deserve to be loved or respected. ”

I reach for him, but he keeps going, needing to get this out, and as much as I can’t take the pain in his voice, I want to hear this.

“And you’ve shown me, over and over, that you don’t see me that way.

That you see me as more than what was done to me.

But it doesn’t matter, Mandy. Not to the part of me that still believes all that bullshit.

Just like it doesn’t matter how many times I tell you that you’re beautiful and worthy and mine , because there’s a part of you that’s always going to be waiting for me to walk away. ”

My heart cracks. Wide. Irrevocably. He takes a breath like he’s about to jump out of a plane.

“So I guess,” he says, “I just have to make a deal with you.”

He shifts closer, eyes shining, voice shaking but steady.

“Every day that you wake up and decide to stay and spend another day convincing me that I’m lovable, I’ll get up, I’ll put my boots on, and I’ll stomp my lazy ass out of bed and convince you right back that you’re the answer to every single one of my prayers.

Even the ones I never had the guts to pray for. ”

I make a choked sound. His hand finds my jaw, thumb brushing my cheek, just beneath the bandage.

“That I want you,” he says, “that I need you, and that I love you.”

His lips graze mine, and I feel the electric shock travel through my entire face, even the numb parts.

“That every day, I choose you.”

A kiss to the corner of my mouth.

“Again.”

To my cheek.

“And again.”

To my nose.

“And again.”

And finally, finally , to my lips.

I kiss him back with everything in me, like I believe him, even if I’m still learning how.

The tears that fall soak both our cheeks, but it doesn’t matter—not to him, and not to me. He just holds his mouth against mine, convincing me, loving me, healing me with his kiss.