“Here, take these.” I handed Emma the pills as I slid behind the curtain. “Those should tame the pain down to a dull ache.”

She didn’t ask what they were or whose they were, she just took them. She had every reason not to trust another human being after what she’d been exposed to, and here she was, trusting me.

“So I’m not exactly Paul Mitchell, but I can give a not-too-shabby shampoo.” I pulled the bottle from my slacks and presented it like a sommelier holding a vintage bottle of wine.

She looked between me and the bottle a few times, and then she laughed. Billowing laughter that echoed through the empty corners of the bathroom.

To say I was perplexed would have been a bit rhetorical given the situation.

“Look at us,” she said between bursts of laughter. “I look like I was at the epicenter of a rugby squirmish—in my underwear—and you’re in what’s left of a three piece suit, all wet, sexy, and brooding, looking like you’re about to shoot a shampoo ad. A shampoo, by the way, every girl would buy just so they could think of you while they were lathering their hair.” She was laughing so hard by now, she could have been crying.

“You are mad, you know that right?” I said, incapable of not smiling when she was laughing like it was the best one she’d had in awhile.

“Of course I do,” she replied, attempting and failing to gain some composure. “But I’ve seen some strange things, and this,”—she motioned between the two of us—“is the oddest one of them all. I feel like I just stepped into some goth, slasher, romantic comedy movie or something.”

“Since you’ve seen so many of those,” I said, squeezing a gob of coconut scented goop into my palm.

“I consider myself an expert on that particular genre of movie,” she teased, letting her head fall back to get her hair wet. Another bright burst of red floated toward the drain.

“Em? Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re kind of freaking me out,” I said, focusing on lathering the shampoo in my hands. “I don’t know whether to be relieved you’re smiling and laughing and making jokes an hour after you were beat within an inch of your life or to be seriously concerned.”

Her laughter died, but her smile stayed securely in place. “Contrary to what you might think due to recent events,” she explained with a sweeping gaze down her body, “today has been the hands down best day of my life.”

Staring at her broken face, I wanted to cry just then, so I stepped around her so I wouldn’t have to look at what the best day of her life had done to her.

“I’m going to need a serious explanation for that,” I said, clearing my throat. “Like a detailed outline, followed by a thesis the size of the San Francisco Bay area phone book.” I gathered her hair on top of her head and began sudsing away. The shampoo froth almost immediately took on a pinkish hue.

“For the first time in six years, actually, for the first time since I met him,” Emma began, trying to look over her shoulder at me. She didn’t make it very far before her jaw clenched in pain. “I stood up to Ty. I gave him a piece of my mind with no buffers or filters. I got in his face and made sure he heard me. For the very first time,” she said.

“That worked out magically for you,” I said under my breath, rinsing away part of the outcome of her standing up to him.

“It could have been worse,” she said with a barely there shrug. “I never really imagined my life winding down into old age and a gentle passing into the hereafter. I, somewhere deep in the places I didn’t want to acknowledge, but recognized them just the same, expected I’d pass from this life into the next at the end of a fist.”

The shampoo bottle I was gripping in my hand burst open. I hadn’t realized I’d been squeezing it to death.

“How long has this been going on?” I asked, needing to know, and she’d opened the door to getting all the dark flushed out early.

“The first year he was so good to me, too good to be true,” she said. “And two days after our one year anniversary, I found out too good to be true was exactly that. I remember each beating, each fit of rage, most ignited because I’d been talking to another guy, some just because he didn’t like what I was wearing or a certain look I gave him. After awhile, he didn’t need an excuse. This past year I expected the backside of his hand just as readily as a hug.”

It was like putting an open flame to my flesh, but I had to keep going. I had to know everything because I had to know all of her. “Why didn’t you just leave him?”

Her head swayed side to side. “For a bunch of reasons that seem really trivial now that he’s finally out of my life,” she said. “Ty was all I knew, the only guy I’d ever dated, ever loved, ever imagined my life with. I clung to the hope that he’d change back into the man he was the first year we were together. I believed so little in myself that no one else would ever want me, and I was messed up enough in the head to believe that anyone was better than no one.” She paused, taking in a few breaths. I’d been massaging the same area of her head for I don’t know how long.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” I whispered, because that’s all I was capable of. I felt as broken on the inside as she was on the outside.

“I was ashamed. And embarrassed,” she answered.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You would have been the last person I would have told,” she said, and before I could launch into a why the heck not?, she cut me off. “Because when you looked at me, you saw this person I’d always wanted to become. You saw the me I would have become if I hadn’t let others and myself screw up my life.” She sighed, leaning into me. “I loved the way you looked at me, and I had this fear that if I told you I was one of those women who found themselves trapped in an abusive relationship, you’d never look at me the same way again. You’d never even look at me again.” Her voice, for the first time since entering the shower, sounded sad.

Coming around in front of her, I tilted her chin up, waiting for her eyes to find mine. They finally did.

“Am I looking at you any differently right now?”

She studied me, all the way into the dark and cobwebbed places of my soul, and then she smiled. A fresh bead of blood broke through the split on her lower lip. “No.”

“That’s right,” I said, polishing the blood away from her lip. “And to save you the suspense, there’s nothing you can reveal to me about your past or do in your future that will change the way I look at you. I flippin’ worship you, Emma Scarlett. And that’s never, ever, in a million billion years going to change. Promise,” I added, because this, too, was a promise I could keep with unfailing certainty.

The thing about the kind of love I had for Emma was that it was as unequivocal as it was permanent. That’s the way love, in its pure, undiluted form was—it accepted a person’s bad with their good, their failures with their successes, their past with a boyfriend that beat the shit out of them with their future with a man who would love the shit out of them.

“I know that now,” she said, pressing her lips into mine. “Sorry I didn’t realize it sooner.”

I wanted to kiss her again, so damn badly I was tempted to turn the shower as cold as it would go, so I thought of something else that might work instead. “Your brothers never suspected anything?”

It worked. The mere mention of Emma’s four brothers extinguished the fires.

“Of course not,” she said. “If they did, do you think they would have hesitated to take that baseball bat to him sooner?” We both knew the answer to that. “No, Ty was careful. He made sure the bruises formed in spots that were easy to cover, and he never raised a hand to me when anyone was around. But lately, he started getting sloppy, less careful.”

How many of those less “thoughtfully” placed bruises had I witnessed this month and taken her word that vicious volleyballs were to blame? I was a fool.

“Because of me,” I provided, stepping behind her and rinsing her hair for the third time. The water was almost running clear.

She didn’t provide an answer to that; she didn’t need to. We both knew the truth.

“God, Emma. I’m sorry,” I said, my arms going limp at my sides. “If I’d have known this was going on, I wouldn’t have been my persistent self and made things worse for you.” I had to lean into the tile wall for support.

“And then I would have killed him,” I added.

She chuckled a nervous little one. I didn’t.

“You want to hear the last point in the best day of my life outline?” she asked, turning to face me, the water beating in the space separating us.

She waited for an answer, but I couldn’t come up with one. I didn’t want to hear any more as much as I did.

Refusing to wait any longer, she touched her forehead to mine. I could feel the heat of the gash above her eyebrow against my skin.

“You,” she said.

My head felt heavy against hers. I did not deserve to be a proof in her reasoning for a best day.

“Yes,” she argued with my silent response. “You are everything I always wanted, but never believed I deserved. I still didn’t believe it up to a few hours ago, but I suppose you could say you made me see the light.”

I was still wordless, it was happening a lot lately, so I wrapped my arms around her battered, bruised, perfect body and gripped her to me like I could suck all the pain out of her.

“For someone like you, who could have their pick of any woman on the seven continents, to pick me . . .”—her chest heaved heavy against mine—“well, that must mean I’m something special, right? Even if I don’t see it quite yet.”

I saw the beauty then. I was able to look past the pain framing the moment and get to the core of the moment. I wouldn’t forget tonight for several reasons, but the one that would shine above the others was this one right here. The woman I loved resting in my arms, acknowledging she was more than what she’d always believed she was.

“You’re the most something special I’ve ever come across,” I said into her hair, clutching her tighter. If I never let her go, I could always keep her safe. That was the only thing I wanted to do right then.

Never let her go. Protect her. And love her above all.

“Hey, guys.” A trio of knocks thumped outside the bathroom door. Julia sounded just as frazzled as before. “My dad’s here now. No rush, though.”

“We’ll be right there,” Emma answered against my shoulder, not moving an inch.

I pressed a kiss into the bruise exploding over her forehead. “Time to get you to a doc,” I said, shutting off the water and reaching for the bundle of towels piled on the bench. I bundled Emma’s hair into a leaning tower beehive and cinched the other towel around the rest of her before lifting her into my arms.

“I’m good to walk now,” she said, looping an arm around my neck. “That shower and the pills made me a new woman.”