I stopped when I felt Stellan’s hand close around my leg.
“And then, um, we’ll sterilize the cut,” I continued, my voice high, reedy. “Head wounds bleed a lot, but it’ll heal quickly enough if you don’t mess with it and then you’ll—then you’ll—”
Stellan stroked my knee with his thumb, calmly, firmly. Whatever had been building up for so long—the knot pulling tight, my sanity stretching thin—I felt the moment it snapped.
Once the first tear fell, it was a floodgate.
No laughing this time, just silent, steady tears, dripping salty into my mouth for what felt like a long time. The cloying orange shampoo scent, the buzz of the fluorescent light over the sink, the clack clack clack of the train tracks. The water sloshed in the basin as Stellan tilted his head up, and I could feel him looking at me.
I took a deep breath, full of the soothing, steady strokes of his thumb on the knee of my jeans and their inherent promise that I wasn’t alone but that he wasn’t going to force me to talk about it. The last almost-sob died in my throat.
“And then you’ll be okay.” I blinked the tears away, my vision cleared, and I realized that Stellan’s head was still resting heavy in my hands, my fingers still twisted in his hair, blond streaked with red, making shaky ripples in the reddening water.
I disentangled them and wiped the mascara from my face with the back of my hand, then put a little more shampoo in the water and swished it around. Stellan didn’t let go of my leg, and I didn’t move away.
“That’s not normal, about the scars,” I said, like the last few minutes hadn’t happened. My voice was stronger now. “Scars are supposed to be dead tissue.”
He opened his eyes. “Nothing about not burning like a regular human being is normal,” he said. “But no, I don’t suppose scars should hurt seven years after the fact. I think in some way I always knew there was something . . . off about that. Maybe that’s why I never told anyone.”
“Nobody else knows?” I said quietly.
He shook his head. My eyes traced the scars again as I thought of everything he must have to do daily that would hurt. I let out a breath through pursed lips before leaning back over the sink, trying to find a position where I didn’t have to drape myself across his chest. “Are you okay like this?”
He rested the hand not on my knee on his stomach. “Surprisingly comfortable.”
“I’m going to try to be gentle, but tell me if it hurts.” I worked the blood out of his hair, trying not to pull on the wound itself. I wasn’t sure how well the painkillers were working. After a minute, a small, blissed-out smile came over his face, so I was pretty sure he was okay. I wiped a bead of bloody water off his forehead and gave him a nudge. “You have to stay awake.”
“Feels nice, though,” he murmured. “Feels really nice.”
“Have you never had someone do this?”
His eyes slit open and he quirked a what do you think? eyebrow.
“I fell asleep once getting my hair washed at the salon,” I confessed, trying to keep him conscious. “It was right after one of our moves, and I was really stressed and hardly sleeping. My mom took us to get haircuts and pedicures, and I passed out with my head in the sink and my feet in some lady’s hands. My mom convinced them to let me sleep for an hour. I woke up with the worst crick in my neck.”
Stellan smiled, but I could tell he was fading when his hand dropped from my leg. I tugged on his earlobe. “Hey. Wake up. Let me look at your pupils.”
“Mmm,” he sighed, but he opened his eyes. His pupils didn’t look too dilated, which I was pretty sure was good. He was quiet for a minute, then said, “That guy. The one who—is yours now. With the scar on his cheek.”
I paused, my hands in the floating blond halo of his hair, which, just for a second, reminded me so much of being underwater that my lungs ached. “Scarface. That’s what I call him.”
“He looked like someone, but I couldn’t remember who. And now I do. An Emir Keeper. Rocco. He was terminated two years ago. For—”
“Having a thing with a family member.”
Stellan nodded, and his head bobbed in my hands. “Besides the scar, he looks just like him, and I could have sworn he had an olive branch tattooed under the compass. Did you see that?”
I nodded. “That’s impossible, though, right? That Keeper is dead.”
I didn’t know what it meant, but I didn’t want to think about any of it. The train jolted, splashing a little water out of the sink.
“Sorry to bring it up,” Stellan said, seeing straight through me as always. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
“It’s fine,” I said shortly, but we fell into silence while I kept up the slow task of getting out the blood without making it worse. A short time later, I glanced down to make sure Stellan wasn’t asleep and found him watching me openly.
“What?” I said.