“Compound fracture,” she murmurs. “It snappedthrough the muscle. Took two surgeries to piece it back together.”
Jesus.I blink hard, but my hand doesn’t falter as she guides it up her ribs. Her skin is soft under my calloused fingertips, too soft for the damage it hides.
“Three cracked ribs. And my scapula… that was a mess. Still locks sometimes when I’m cold.”
She guides my hand to her left hip bone, where I feel the hard ridge of surgical metal just under the surface.
“Shattered hip. Took a rod and three plates to put me back together. Still hurts like a bitch, every damn day.”
God,I want to take some of that pain from her so she can breathe.
She draws my touch across the side of her lower back, just above her waistband, where a small, twisted scar curves beneath the skin. I wouldn’t have noticed it on my own, not with the others drawing my eye. But now, touching it, I can feel how deep it runs.
“Left kidney. Took too much damage from the impact… from the bleeding. They couldn’t save it.”
She breathes out shakily as my hand rests there, her body trembling. “There was… a lot of bleeding in the abdomen. They thought it was just the organ damage at first, but…” she shakes her head, “… let’s just say I’m a mess.”
I want to tell her she’s not. That she’s more put together than most people I know, for sure more than I am, but my throat is too tight for words. So I let my touch speak for me, fingers reverent, tracing her pain like it’s poetry.
She lifts my hand upward until my fingers slide beneath the edge of her sports bra, making her gasp.Fuck, that sound.I keep my touch gentle, skimming along the warm slope of her ribcage while my eyes flick up to hers.
Her beautiful molten caramel eyes.
Alaina is staring at me, and her pulse is hammeringunder her skin just as fast as mine is. My fingertips settle there, against the raised edge of the scar, but my palm flattens around the warm, smooth skin surrounding it.
My eyes drag from hers to her parted lips, then back again, and for a moment, we just breathe together.
“My lung was punctured. Collapsed,” she pants out finally. “I couldn’t breathe. There was a tube down my throat for days.”
Nodding slightly, I watch my hand rise and fall with her breaths, the ones shecantake now.
Goose bumps ripple across her skin, and fuck, her nipples are pebbled under the thin fabric of her sports bra, tight and aching just like the heat pulsing low in my gut.
We’re in sync with every breath, every rushing heartbeat, and itwrecksme.
Not only because she’s beautiful and standing half-bare in front of me, letting me touch her, but because I wasn’t there.Because she went through hell alone.
But I’m here now.
And I will never look away again, not even if it kills me.
My hand shifts instinctively, splaying wider across the edge of the scar, and my thumb brushes the swell of her breast because my hand wants to feelallof her, even the pieces that still tremble. Her breath stutters, then breaks entirely into a small, startled hiccup.
“I didn’t know it was this bad.” The words fall out of me, rough with guilt. “Fuck… I didn’t know.”
She should hate me for it, for not being there for her, for not trying harder, but she’s still here, right under my hands, letting me in anyway.
My face hovers just above hers, so close I can feel the heat radiating off her skin. I lower my lips, pressing them to the soft curve of her cheek. “Fuck, baby girl, I’m sorry.”
I mean it to stop there. To be just that, a moment ofbeing close enough to say everything I can’t put into words. But she turns and slides her hand behind my neck, buries her fingers in my hair, and she kisses me.
Not tentatively.
Desperately.
She presses her mouth to mine like she’s been holding this in her lungs for years.
My small gasp of surprise is brief, and before I even realize what I’m doing, my hands slide up along her sides until they find her face. Cupping her jaw with both hands, my fingers brush through the ends of her sweat-damp hair, and my thumbs graze the edge of her cheeks, wiping away her leftover tears like she’s something delicate, even though Iknowshe’s not.
