And then, we are home. His home.

Our refuge.

We make a sorry-looking pair. He’s on autopilot and I’m going into shock, unable to speak or move. I stay rooted to my spot in the passenger seat, my eyes spilling fresh tears, shame and guilt pressing me so heavily it feels like I’m drowning.

The strong girl, the fighter, she’s gone. And in her space is this meek, terrified child whose fate rests in the hands of the boy she used to love.

The boy she still loves.

My door opens and I’m being guided to my feet. Up a flight of stairs. My ears are still ringing. My entire body is shaking. My lips still feel bruised from that earth-shattering kiss Jase gave me, that now seems like it was eons ago, when in fact it was only a few hours ago.

When we reach the first floor, Jase is supporting me, one arm around my waist, as he fishes for the right key to his front door.

Finally inside, I see his couch, and for a moment I think I see my father sitting there, silently observing us. I blink and he’s gone, nothing but a haunted memory from my overactive imagination.

Jase guides me into the bathroom and I catch a glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror as he turns the shower on, hot and blasting. I am a mess. I have dust and plaster caked in my hair, remnants from the bomb blast that tore open the front of Emilio’s mansion like a knife through butter—only much, much messier. Plus, there are patches of dried, sticky goop in my hair that I just know is my lucky share of Jimmy’s blood and brain matter.

I stare at the floor, because I can’t look at Jase. His eyes roam across my face, and I wonder what he searches for there. Proof? Recognition? Memories?

My ears feel wet and I wonder if they’re bleeding, because I still can’t hear much and the ringing in my head is at fever pitch.

It makes me wonder, if I’m this shell-shocked from the blast of Dornan’s bike, and I was far away, how on earth anyone else survived.

How did Dornan survive?

I mean, I know that Jase shooting Jimmy centimeters from me is probably why I can’t hear. But still. I was shell-shocked from the blast well before Jimmy interrupted us.

“Pants,” Jase says as he tugs on my jeans, kneeling in front of me. He’s looking at me like he’s already said it a few times, but if he did I didn’t hear him. I open my mouth to tell him I’m basically deaf, but I can’t form the words, so I just close my mouth and swallow painfully.

I undo the top button of my jeans and grip his shoulders as he pulls them down, stepping out of them with shaking legs. He rises, trying to catch my eye again, but I turn my head away and watch, mesmerized, as the spray from the shower head blasts against the gleaming white tiles on the wall, puffs of steam rising in their wake.

Something inside me withers and dies as I recall my shower with Dornan in this very room. On my knees, almost suffocating as he rammed his dick down my throat, while the wound he created in my leg pulsed blood from torn stitches onto the tiles below. My fingers unconsciously go to that spot on my leg, the place where he stabbed me so violently, tracing the raised scar tissue in a straight horizontal line across my thigh.

How will Jase ever forgive me?

I’m numb as I let him tug my shirt over my head and toss it in the corner. I just stand mute, unable to speak or cry or process anything.

I notice out of the corner of my eye that he goes completely still for a moment, and I turn back to him, suddenly alarmed. He’s looking at the scars that line my hip, the ones covered in Elliot’s beautiful tattoo, and I gasp when he presses his warm, trembling fingers against my cold flesh.

As soon as I gasp he pulls his hand away, tearing his gaze from me as he puts his hand under the shower spray. He brings his wet hand back to me and takes my arm gently, guiding me under the rushing water with him.

He’s still staring at me intensely. What is he thinking? That if he blinks, I might disappear?

And maybe I will. Maybe I’ll melt straight onto the floor and slide down the drain, gone entirely. Like a ghost.

The vision in my head is unsettling, so I try to bat it away. Which maybe isn’t the best idea, because as soon as I get rid of that thought, I’m reminded of the last time I showered in this bathroom—fresh out of the emergency room after my own poisoned coke almost killed me.

As if the thought of blowing Dornan in here isn’t bad enough, now I’m reminded of something just as bad. This bathroom is full of way too many bad memories.

Jesus. I can’t even process what Jase must think of me.

It suddenly occurs to me that the boy with the sad eyes standing with me, supporting me in the shower as I step listlessly from foot to foot, is still fully dressed as he stands under the water with me.

“Your clothes are all wet,” I croak, or at least it sounds like a faint croak, because I can hardly hear.

Jase smiles sadly, looking down at his saturated black shirt and heavy jeans that must weigh a ton with all the water. “I didn’t want to give you the wrong idea,” he says, and I nod blankly.

The wrong idea? My heart breaks as I realize he’s talking about sex. He didn’t get undressed because he didn’t want me to worry that he wanted sex. Of course, that never even entered my mind. But I think of the last time he saw me, the last time he really saw me before I died, and I have to wonder how many times he’s played that horrid afternoon through his mind over the past six years.

Of course he’d be afraid to touch me. Of course.

My eyes sting, and I remember I’ve still got these stupid blue contact lenses stuck to my eyeballs, probably coated in dust and debris. I’m lucky I don’t have chunks of shrapnel lodged in my eyes. I rinse my fingers under the water and slide a finger over each eye, pinching the thin blue plastic discs away, and flicking them down the drain. He knows who I am, after all. There’s no point hiding it.

He’s been watching me intently, and once I’ve tossed the contact lenses on the floor, he places a gentle hand on my chin.

“Look at me,” he says quietly, and I do. I gaze up at him, my eyes watering, wondering what he sees. What he feels. The moment feels surreal. The steam from the shower, the stark white of the tiles. It makes me think momentarily that I must be a dead girl.

“There you are,” he says. “Are you really here? Are you real?”

“I think so,” I rasp, closing my fingers around his tattooed bicep.

“Your face,” he says. “What happened to it?”

It’s so different I can’t even begin to explain.

“It’s gone,” I reply thickly. “It was the only way I could fool him.”

He studies my face, running his fingertips along my altered cheekbones, my thinner nose, my untouched lips, before coming back to my eyes, the same as they ever were.

“Juliette,” he whispers.

The way he says my name, it hurts. An avalanche of sadness and relief bursts forth from me, and I sob brokenly. He pulls me closer to him, and we stand there in the shower, a tableau of sorrow and regret, as the water washes pieces of plaster and dust from our skin.

If only washing away our sins was so easy.

The shower comes to an end all too quickly with a burst of cold water, reminding us that the hot water has run out. Slowly, moving like we are wading through quicksand, we towel ourselves off and leave the bathroom. Jase peels a layer of wet clothing off and replaces it with dry versions of the same, then brings me a pair of gray sweat pants and a dark blue T-shirt. He leaves the room and I unstick my wet underwear from my chest and hips, changing into the fresh clothes.

It’s a starkly contrasted mood to the last time I was here, only a few days ago, when he thought I was either an undercover cop or at least screwing one. Elliot. I need to contact him. He’ll be sick out of his mind with worry.