The Struggle(51)

“You okay?” Seth was immediately kneeling in front of me again, his hands on my knees. “Josie?”

“Yeah,” I whispered, clearing my throat. “I’m just . . .” I was a lot of things. Scared. Sore. Confused. Relieved. Hurting. Exhausted. My heart felt like it had broken a thousand times in a span of a few days.

“That’s not true. It was a stupid question for me to ask.” Seth placed the tips of his fingers on my cheek. “I wish I could take the pain away. I would do anything to do that for you.”

My breath caught. He sounded so genuine, but what was he doing out there? This whole time? How did I get here? Did he fight the Titans and free me? I had so many questions, but I didn’t have the will to ask them at the moment.

I could only say, “You left me.”

Seth’s eyes slammed shut and he dropped his hand. Steam filled up the bathroom. He lowered his head until his chin almost touched my knee. “I know. Saying I’m sorry is never going to change that or what happened to you, but I am.” His lashes lifted and he peered up at me through them, and his eyes looked oddly moist. “I have never been more sorry about anything in my life.”

The twisting motion in my chest increased as I croaked out, “I need to shower.”

Seth went as still as one of the statues out in the hall and then he exhaled unevenly. “Can you stand in there?”

It wasn’t going to be easy, but I wasn’t sure I could handle Seth helping me. Yeah, he’d seen all of this before, but I . . . I just couldn’t. “I can.”

He didn’t look like he believed me, but he touched me again. Just the tips of his fingers against my cheek, and I fought the urge to press against his touch. “You’re safe here. You will be safe from here on out.”

There was the word again. Safe. That word rang as a falsehood, because if I had learned anything about my time with the Titans, no one was safe anywhere, but I nodded anyway.

Seth stared at me for a few more seconds. “I’ll be waiting outside. If you need anything, call for me.”

He lingered and then dropped his hand. He rose and left the bathroom, leaving the door cracked open so he could obviously hear me if I busted my ass, which was entirely possible.

I sat on the bathtub for a couple of minutes and then I got down to the painful process of stripping out of my disgusting clothes. I left them on the floor, never wanting to see them again as I walked toward the shower, moving like I was ninety years old and passing a fogged mirror on the way.

I couldn’t make out much of how I looked, but I could see enough to know I was an utter mess.

Clutching the half-wall of the shower, I stepped in and under the warm stream of water. I gasped as the water hit my skin. My body simultaneously rejoiced and recoiled. Raw areas stung and burned like a thousand fire ants were gnawing on my skin, but I stayed under the stream, lifting my face up. The water washed away days of grime and dried blood as my knees wobbled.

It could be worse.

Those were the words I repeated over and over as I looked down and grabbed a bottle of shampoo. Pink and brown-tinted water swirled along the basin, cycling down the drain. It took two shampoos, one round of conditioner, and a complete, achy body scrub down for the water to run clear.

And I still stood under the shower, picking at the dirt under my fingernails, and when my nails were clean I washed myself once more. I soaped up my wrists and tried to work the bracelets off until my skin was red and hurt, and only then did I give up. The bathroom smelled like a botanical garden by that point.

I didn’t allow myself to think through the whole process. Not until I was reaching for the faucets did the first real thought break through the haze and the simple joy of being clean again.

My mom was dead.

She was truly gone.

Through the whole time I was with Hyperion, I couldn’t let myself think too much about, but now that I was here, I could see her face, the almost always distant glaze to her eyes, the sweet smile on her lips.

There would be no saving her.

No more looking forward to seeing her.

My father had lied and he had left me to rot with Hyperion, and I had rotted, from the inside out. The pain. The darkness. The constant fear. I’d lived in that for days and days, and it was still inside me, still haunting every breath.

And now I was here. I was with Seth. I was where I’d planned to be before I learned about my mother and before Hyperion had taken me, and it was all wrong. That had not been the reunion   I’d anticipated, the one that had helped me keep my sanity in the long, dark hours trapped underground. It had just been wrong.

Clapping my hands over my face, I stepped back until I hit the cool tile wall. I slid down and curled into myself, drawing my knees to my chest. The position hurt. Tugged on raw skin. Pressed on bruised areas, but the tears started and it was like a floodgate opening up as I buried my face between my knees.