Safer This Way

Chapter 31

A few days late but I think I'm close enough...Happy Reading :)

*Victor*

Naked.

"Dude are you okay?"

She was very, very naked.

"I don't think he heard you, Nate."

I was holding her, and she was very naked.

"I think you're right, Luke."

Her skin is so soft.

"Hey, hand me that cup of water, will you?"

A splash of ice cold water hitting my face snaps me out of my head, and I glare at Nathan who still holds the styrofoam cup that had been sitting at Sang's bedside. Only now it's empty, and he doesn't look near apologetic enough, smirking while Luke chortles beside him.

"You looked a little flushed. Just thought I'd help you out," he deadpans and my face burns a little remembering why I was so flushed in the first place. In fact, now that I think about it, I'm grateful for the small cold shower and escape from the circular nature of my previous thoughts. The feel of her skin and the memory of the moment I'd realized the towel had fallen ran around in my brain like a chaotic melody with no end in sight.

I clear my throat roughly before it takes over again. "Yeah...thanks for that."

Nathan looks at me strangely, like he can't tell whether to be worried or amused. "What the hell happened in that bathroom?"

Well I can't tell them she was naked... "She took a shower," I blurt out, pretty similarly to how she did actually, and I wince because that was not the way I should have worded that.

As soon as the words left my mouths, a choking sound comes from Nathan's left, and I see Luke sputtering water from another cup, shirt wet from the near spit take he must have done, the others still in the room–Kota, Owen, Nathan, and North–look slightly horrified.

"While you were in there?" Luke half shouts when he stops choking, and I feel my face go hot when the thought makes my brain dive back down to the gutters.

"No! I wasn't–she wasn't–that's not what I meant!"

Nathan breathes out a sigh of relief before a confused expression replaces the earlier horror. "Why would she take a shower? Her hair was already wet...I'm confused," he sort of mumbles to himself, and Luke snorts, obviously having recovered already.

"You actually noticed her hair?" Nathan shoots him a dirty look, one that quickly morphs into a smug smirk seconds before North knocks his brother upside the head with a growl.

"Don't talk about her like that, asshole. What if she came out here and heard you talking like that. I know it's fun to joke, but not when she wouldn't understand anything but her being laughed at. Do you want her to be embarrassed for the rest of her life?" Luke, wide-eyed and pale, shakes his head despite it obviously being a rhetorical question. "No, you don't. Keep it in your pants until we know she's comfortable with that kind of humor, got it?"

"Yep. Yes. Uh-huh, 100% clear," he says way too emphatically and I hear Kota and Owen sigh like exasperated fathers from their spots to my left. Although, I find myself thankful he'd stepped in and said something, as he really is the only person that Luke will take seriously when he gets joking. Sure, he takes orders and quiets when Owen shoots him what Gabe refers to as his grumpy "care bear stare," but it never sticks like what North says. To be honest, Luke respects him a whole hell of a lot more because he's related.