Chapter 2: The Cold Shower Truce
The alarm on Trisha's phone screamed at 6:17 AM like a personal attack.
She'd set it the night before, after three hours of unpacking that had devolved into her sitting cross-legged on her bedroom floor, surrounded by half-empty boxes, questioning every life choice that had led her to this apartment. Her bed was still unmade—sheets tangled around her ankles when she'd finally collapsed—and her eyes felt gritty, like someone had rubbed sand into them while she slept.
But she was awake. And she was ready to prove a point.
Sam had said six to six-twenty. Those were the terms. He'd agreed to them, standing in the hallway with that insufferable grin, and Trisha had spent the rest of the evening nursing a grudge that had only sharpened with each passing hour.
She'd gone to bed at midnight. Tossed until one. Stared at the ceiling until two. At some point, she must have drifted off, because the alarm had yanked her from a dream she couldn't quite remember—something about drowning, or maybe falling. Something that left her heart racing and her palms damp.
She didn't need much time to get ready. Twenty minutes was plenty. She'd shower, brush her teeth, and be out by 6:40, leaving Anna a pristine bathroom and a clear conscience.
But first, she needed Sam to honor his end of the bargain.
Her bare feet padded against the hardwood as she shuffled down the hallway. The apartment was quiet, muffled in that early-morning way, when the world still felt half-formed and unreal. The living room was a shadowy maze of boxes, the beige sectional looming like a sleeping beast. The smell of last night's lo mein still hung in the air, greasy and stale.
She reached the bathroom door.
Paused.
Pressed her ear against the wood.
Water running. The hiss of the shower, steady and rhythmic. And underneath it—nothing. No footsteps. No rustling. Just the water and the silence and the faint creak of pipes settling in the walls.
He was in there. Alone. Taking a shower.
At 6:18.
Two minutes past his window. Two minutes into her time. Two minutes of pure, unadulterated disrespect.
Trisha's jaw tightened. Her hand found the doorknob. She didn't knock. Didn't announce herself. Didn't do any of the polite, reasonable things that a normal person might do in this situation.
She just shoved the door open and stepped inside.
The bathroom was small—claustrophobic, really, with its cracked tile floor and the vanity that took up more space than it should. The mirror was fogged from the steam, obscuring everything in a hazy, dreamlike blur. Lance's razor sat on the edge of the sink, coated in stubble. Sam's toothpaste tube lay beside it, squeezed from the middle in a way that made her eye twitch. Her own perfume lingered in the air, floral and faint, clashing with the stale cigarette smoke that had seeped into the grout long before any of them had moved in.
And there, standing at the toilet with his back to her, was Sam.
He hadn't heard her come in. The shower was still running—he must have turned it on to heat up before stepping in—and the sound had masked her entrance. He stood with his weight shifted to one hip, his free hand braced against the wall, his shoulders relaxed in that easy, careless way he had.
He was peeing.
Trisha should have left. Should have backed out of the bathroom, closed the door, and pretended this had never happened. That was the sane response. The reasonable response. The response of someone who hadn't spent the last twelve hours stewing in a toxic cocktail of irritation and something else, something darker, something she refused to name.
Instead, she froze.
Her hand was still on the doorknob. Her feet were rooted to the tile. And her eyes—her traitorous, uncooperative eyes—went exactly where they shouldn't.
He was naked. Of course he was naked. He was about to get in the shower. His clothes were probably in a pile somewhere, maybe on the closed lid of the hamper, maybe on the counter—she didn't know, she couldn't look, because she was too busy staring at the curve of his spine, the shift of muscle beneath skin, the way his back tapered to a waist that was narrower than she'd expected.
And then he turned.
Not all the way. Just enough. Enough that his profile came into view, and with it, everything else.
He was still peeing. Hadn't finished. Didn't seem to care. His stream hit the water in the bowl with a steady, unhurried sound, and his hand was wrapped around himself—not in any way that was practical, just holding, casual, like this was the most natural thing in the world.
Trisha's throat went dry.
She should look away. She knew she should look away. This was an invasion of privacy. This was a violation of boundaries. This was exactly the kind of thing that would give her nightmares—or, worse, exactly the kind of thing that wouldn't.
But her eyes stayed fixed.
The steam curled around him like smoke, softening the edges of his silhouette. His hips were lean, his thighs thick with muscle, and between them—
She swallowed.
Sam's head turned. Just slightly. Just enough.
Their eyes met in the fogged glass of the mirror.
For one frozen, endless moment, neither of them moved. The water ran. The toilet flushed. Somewhere in the apartment, a floorboard creaked, and Trisha felt the sound in her bones.
Then Sam grinned.
"You gonna stand there all day?" he asked. His voice was low, roughened by sleep, and it slid down her spine like warm honey. "Or are you waiting for an invitation?"
Trisha's brain short-circuited. Words tangled in her throat, caught somewhere between outrage and something far more dangerous.
"You—" she stammered. "You're—"
"Taking a piss?" He shook off, casual as anything, and turned fully to face her. "Yeah. That's what happens in bathrooms. You should try it sometime."
"You're two minutes over your time," she managed. The words came out strangled, pitched higher than she'd intended. "Two minutes. We agreed—"
"Two minutes." He stepped away from the toilet, and her eyes—damn them, damn them—tracked the movement, dropping lower than they should have. "You barged in here at 6:18 to yell at me about two minutes?"
"You're not supposed to be in here. It's my time."
"It's your time in two minutes. Right now, technically, I still have—" He glanced at the clock on the counter. "—ninety seconds."
"You're splitting hairs."
"You're splitting—" He stopped. Followed her gaze. And then, slowly, his grin widened.
Trisha realized, with a horror that bloomed hot and immediate in her chest, where she was looking. Her eyes had drifted. Not just drifted—settled. Somehow, in the chaos of the last thirty seconds, they'd found their way south, and they'd stayed there, fixed on a part of him that was very much not his face.
Sam's laugh was soft. Almost gentle. Almost kind.
"You're staring," he said.
"I'm not."
"You are. You've been staring for—" He tilted his head. "—twenty seconds? Thirty? Hard to tell. Time flies when you're having fun."
"I'm not having fun. I'm trying to establish boundaries."
"Boundaries." He said the word like it tasted funny. "You're standing in my bathroom, watching me pee, and you want to talk about boundaries?"
"You were watching me back."
"I was trying to figure out if you were going to bolt or faint."
Trisha's face burned. The steam from the shower wasn't helping—it clung to her skin, damp and oppressive, making her feel like she was melting from the inside out. Her pulse was a drumbeat in her ears. Her hands had curled into fists at her sides.
"I'm not going to faint," she said. "I'm not some Victorian maiden who's never seen—" She gestured vaguely. "—that."
"That?" Sam raised an eyebrow. "That's what you're calling it?"
"I'm not calling it anything."
"You just called it 'that.' Seems specific enough."
"It's not—" She sputtered. "You're impossible."
"I've been told."
"And you're naked."
"Also true."
"And you're—" She stopped. Swallowed. Because he was. He absolutely was.
What had started as something soft, something mundane, something she could convince herself she hadn't really seen—it wasn't soft anymore. It wasn't mundane. It was growing, stiffening, rising under her gaze like a challenge, like a declaration, and she couldn't pretend she didn't notice.
She definitely couldn't pretend she wasn't the reason.
Sam followed her gaze again. Looked down at himself. Looked back up at her, and this time, when he smiled, it was different. Slower. Hungrier.
"Well," he said. "Looks like we're both full of surprises this morning."
Trisha's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. No sound came out.
"I told you," he said, stepping closer—one step, just one, but it was enough to shrink the room, to make the air feel thinner. "You keep threatening to kill me. But you don't look at people you hate like that."
"I don't look at you like anything."
"You're still staring."
She wasn't. She wasn't. She was looking at his face. His stupid, infuriating, smug face with that stupid, infuriating, smug grin.
Except.
She was still staring.
Not at his face. Not at his eyes. Lower.
At the part of him that had grown thick and hard under her gaze, that stood out from his body like an accusation, like a confession, like something she couldn't unsee no matter how hard she tried.
The bathroom felt smaller than it had a minute ago. The walls pressed in. The mirror reflected them both—her, frozen in the doorway, her hair a mess of purple-streaked tangles, her eyes wide and glassy; him, half-turned toward her, naked and unashamed, his cock rising between them like a third presence in the room.
The shower still ran. The water had gone cold, probably, but neither of them noticed. The steam was thinning now, revealing details she'd been able to blur before—the dark trail of hair below his navel, the faint scar on his side, the way his chest moved with each breath.
"It's not—" Trisha started. Her voice cracked. She tried again. "This isn't—"
"Not what?" Sam asked. He hadn't moved closer. Didn't need to. He was already too close, close enough that she could smell him—cedar and soap and something warm and faintly musky that made her stomach clench.
"I came in here to—"
"To yell at me about two minutes." His voice was low, almost a whisper. "That's what you said."
"Yes."
"So why are you still here?"
She didn't have an answer. Or she did, but it lived somewhere she couldn't reach—somewhere buried under the heat in her chest and the ache in her throat and the pulsing, insistent throb that had started between her legs the moment she'd walked through the door.
"You should go," Sam said. But it wasn't a suggestion. It was a fact. It was him, giving her an out, giving her a chance to retreat before this became something they couldn't take back.
Trisha didn't take it.
"You should have gotten out of the bathroom on time," she said. Childish. Petty. The only weapon she had left.
"You should have knocked."
"You should have locked the door."
"You should have minded your own business."
"This is my bathroom too."
"Then maybe you should have waited your turn."
"Maybe you should have—"
He kissed her.
Or she kissed him.
Neither of them could have said who moved first—only that between one breath and the next, the space between them vanished, and his mouth was on hers, hot and insistent, and her hands were fisted in the empty air where his chest would have been if she'd had the courage to touch him.
He tasted like toothpaste and cold coffee and something deeper, something darker. His hands found her waist, fingers splaying against her hipbones, and she made a sound—half gasp, half moan—that she would deny to her dying day.
The kiss broke. They stared at each other. His chest was rising and falling faster now, his pupils blown wide.
"That was—" Trisha started.
"I know."
"We shouldn't—"
"I know."
"I still hate you."
Sam smiled. That smile. The one that made her want to hit him and kiss him in equal measure.
"Keep telling yourself that," he said. And then his hand slid lower, and his mouth found hers again, and the bathroom door swung shut behind her with a click that sounded very much like a door locking.