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“Yeah,” he said before I even said anything. “It’s going to sting at first. But the heat is going to help. Strip down and get in.”

He walked out and closed the door, leaving it open a crack behind him.

I knew he was probably right about the hot water. Soreness was already radiating through my body and as I pulled my clothes off I could see bruises already forming from Mark’s boots. Damn, he’d gotten me really fucking good.

Asshole.

What the hell had he meant when he said I ruined them? I assumed he was pissed about Trevor, though I hadn’t even been aware Mark knew anything was going on between us. But he’d definitely said them. Who the fuck else had I ruined?

I turned off the water and forced myself to lower my body into the hot water, my skin turning pink almost immediately, but as I settled back against the tub, I was able to relax sooner than I’d expected.

Trevor returned after a few minutes and I glared at him, but he dropped a pillow on the floor next to the tub then sat down, his back resting against the rim away from me as he propped his copy of Hamlet on his knees, then proceeded to read aloud to me for a while.

I let my good eye close as I listened to his deep baritone voice butcher the Old English language, but I had to admit that if I hadn’t been bruised and beaten, it might have been the most romantic thing I’d ever experienced.

Oh, who the fuck was I kidding? It was absolutely the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for me. Sitting in a bathtub while a handsome man read me Shakespeare…it was probably going to be the one night I remembered and thought back to most for the rest of my life.

My thorough beating notwithstanding.

“Is everyone going to fucking die in this?” Trevor asked, lowering the book and looking back at me.

“Well, it’s called a tragedy for a reason,” I said. “Keep reading.”

I just wanted him to keep talking. About anything other than who had beaten the shit out of me. It wasn’t the first time, and with how pissed Mark seemed, I wasn’t even sure it would be the last. But I couldn’t tell him. Not because I was afraid of Mark, but because I didn’t want to hurt Trevor. Mark was his best friend, and I didn’t want to come between them. Because when whatever this was ended, Trevor was going to need his friends.

As pathetic as it sounded, even in my own head, I’d take a hundred beatings if it meant that he could move on and have the life he deserved.

Trevor set his book down and turned fully toward me, grabbing my hand and turning it over in his, his gaze raking over the scraped skin.

“Tell me who the fuck did this to you,” he demanded.

“Trevor, I need you to stop asking me that,” I said.

“Fine.” He released my hand and got to his feet, opening the medicine cabinet over the sink. “Where are your tweezers?”

“My…what?” I was confused by his weird change of subject. The pain coupled with the hot water and steam was making me lightheaded.

“Tweezers, Andy.” He repeated, but then he found them on his own and returned with them and a bottle of peroxide before sitting next to the tub and grabbing my hand again. “This is going to hurt, so you might want to distract yourself.”

“You distract me,” I insisted, leaning back again and closing my eyes as he started to dig gravel out of my palm with the tweezers.

“Well I would, but I need both hands for this,” he teased. “You’re really not going to tell me?”

“Why? So you can go beat them up?” I blew out a sigh that turned into a hiss of pain when he tugged at a particularly deep piece of dirt. “I can fight my own battles.”

“Clearly,” he muttered, dumping peroxide over my skin.

I couldn’t hold back the whimper of pain as the liquid bubbled and hissed, flowing into every tiny abrasion in my skin.

Trevor released that hand then repeated everything with the other, so that when he was done I was just holding my hands out in front of me, palms up over the water.

“Do you need stitches?” he asked, getting up and rifling through the drawers until he found a washcloth.

“No,” I said. “I need an aspirin and some sleep.”

He dropped back to the floor next to me and gently dabbed the wet cloth over my face, his eyes wet as if with unshed tears.

“I never did this to you, did I?” he asked. “Not like this.”