9. Finn
FINN
F inn woke up and knew something had changed. The air felt different. Lauren acted differently. She was subdued, uneasy. It made the bear tense. Had he said or done something under the morphine or from the pain that offended her? Hurt her? He sorted through the blurry muddle in his mind and remembered a few scraps of conversation, but nothing substantial. Nothing to account for the change.
Maybe she regretted getting him out of the trap and bringing him to her safe haven. He was a stranger, after all, and she was a woman alone. So he eased back and moved slow and calm, wanting her to get comfortable with him again. He couldn’t smother the fear out of her, that was for damn sure, even though the bear wanted to drag her into his arms and hold her until she knew she was safe. He inhaled as many protein bars as he could get his hands on, then dumped twice as much protein powder into his water as normal, so he practically had to chew the shake to get it down. Didn’t matter. He needed his leg to start healing, and fast.
Which was the other reason he hadn’t wanted her cleaning his leg. The presto-change-o healing in a day or so would stand out if she’d been wrist-deep in his calf.
She sat stiff and uncomfortable near his feet as Finn sat up and examined what she’d been doing. It still hurt like a son of a bitch, and some of the digging around had woken him up with the little sparks of agony. But the wound was definitely cleaner. The blood clotted right and though there were some chips in the bones, it didn’t burn like it had even a few hours before.
Finn put on some gloves and got to work. Lauren silently handed him gauze and clean cloths and water, then the butterfly closures. He smiled at her, wanting to put her at ease. “We should save those. Is there a suture kit still in the bag?”
Her eyebrows rose, but she didn’t say anything. Just got up to retrieve the rest of the first aid kit so he could paw through it. Finn hated not knowing what she was thinking. How had she gone from a torrent of words to silence? Something had to have changed. But what?
“Have you ever given anyone stitches?” he asked. It wasn’t the best conversational topic, but he couldn’t think of a better one. He hadn’t seen any movies lately, only liked books that other people found boring, and couldn’t touch the part of his life that included a bear and several other bears. He had no idea what to talk about with a woman. His only recent experience was listening to Franny’s school troubles and avoiding Zoe’s too-real conversations about baby poop and lactation and… Finn pushed away that memory. None of them wanted to remember that particular day.
Her brow furrowed. “No.”
“Now’s as good a time to learn as any,” he said. Finn glanced up, eyebrow arched. “It’s gross, I know. You don’t have to watch over me if you want to go to bed or have something else to do.”
Not that there was much to do in the shitty cabin.
She pointed at her head and the lamp. “You need the light.”
Very practical. He smiled, then jerked his chin at the remains of his pack. “My headlamp should be in the top pack. Yeah, next to the iodine filter.”
He spread lidocaine gel along the sides of the wound so maybe the stitches wouldn’t hurt as badly while he waited, and held his breath as the numbing slowly killed the tedious ache. The deeper throb remained, in time with his heartbeat, as his nerves tweaked and twinged. Definitely nerve damage.
Lauren hesitated after handing him the lamp, and Finn looked up at her, waiting.
She flushed and abruptly turned away. “I need to—clean up.” And she fled toward the back bedroom like her ass was on fire.
He frowned, puzzled. Maybe the first step to getting her to relax was him putting on some pants. But first…the stitches.
The morphine had completely worn off, and so had the lidocaine, by the time he finished. It was the ugliest set of stitches he’d ever seen, but it held the wound together and could keep dirt and shit out of it. Good enough for wilderness medicine. Finn glanced up to find Lauren watching him from across the room, sitting in a rickety chair he didn’t remember being in the kitchen.
Finn felt suddenly weary. He didn’t have the mental energy to muddle through whatever conversational minefield awaited. He had no idea what time it was or what waited the next morning. He hoped the smugglers didn’t follow him and hadn’t heard him yelling in the trap, and he really hoped that whatever Lauren was hiding didn’t land on their doorstep for at least twenty-four hours.
His stiff fingers fumbled the bottles of pills Ethan had also included in the first aid kit, and he left the morphine in case things got worse before they got better. When he couldn’t manage the lid, Lauren approached to take it from him. Finn took some antibiotics and a middle-of-the-road narcotic that would dull the pain but not incapacitate him. Just in case someone came knocking in the middle of the night.
He took a deep breath and weighed his next words. He wasn’t usually shy about inviting a girl into his bed, but usually they both knew what was going to happen. Finn stretched to retrieve clean underwear and sweatpants from the pile of his clothes, but hit pause on that until he could cover the stitches with a clean bandage and wrap it up. “I don’t know about you, but I’m wiped out. I’ll get my sleeping bag out and be out of your way in just a second.”
He maneuvered to put the clothes on under the emergency blanket so she didn’t get another eyeful of his junk, concentrating on that instead of Lauren’s wide eyes and the way her pupils dilated. He yawned and moved like he meant to stand or at least crawl, and she jumped forward. “Wait. Don’t—don’t get up. You’ll hurt yourself.”
“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” he said. “I’ll sleep on the floor. I’ve been camping the last couple of weeks anyway, and at least this floor doesn’t have random rocks in it.” And he smiled, hoping it might thaw through whatever had disturbed her.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” she said. Her expression remained serious, so he didn’t know whether to laugh or not.
Finn kept his smile in place as a way to split the difference. Lauren smiled hesitantly in response, though she gnawed her lip as she debated. She smelled faintly of soap and lotion and toothpaste, so clearly she meant to go to sleep. And she needed it; already her eyes drooped, and she barely stayed on her feet. He couldn’t abide the thought of her sleeping on the floor while he had a mattress, but he wouldn’t forgive himself if she was uncomfortable and miserable all night. Neither of them needed that.
She took a hesitant step closer, then put the last few sticks on the fire. “It’s too cold at night away from the fire. I guess—I guess we can share the mattress. If you don’t…”
“I promise to be a perfect gentleman,” he said. Finn put his hand over his heart and saw her gaze follow, lingering on his bare chest. A slight flush rose up her throat and into her cheeks, and Lauren looked away quickly to stare up at the ceiling and shift her feet uncomfortably.
He had a hard time swallowing his grin. Maybe she wouldn’t have minded a good look at him. Finn stretched and made sure she could see as he picked up his sleeping bag and more layers to put on in case it really got cold. He seldom had to worry about cold; to that point, he’d been sleeping as a bear since it was more insulated. He didn’t have that option with her there, but if things got dicey, he could always sleep in the back bedroom and just plan to be awake before her to change back.
Finn unrolled the bag and maneuvered so he was on the side of the mattress away from the fire. When Lauren looked about to protest, he shook his head resolutely. “Absolutely not. You’ll sleep closest to the fire so you can stay warm. I’ll be fine.”
The bear didn’t precisely agree, since they wouldn’t be fine until she was in his sleeping bag with him. But Finn put that aside. If she’d still been a bit scatterbrained but sweet and open and chatty, he might have tried for a kiss, maybe a make out session. With her as nervous as she was… No way in hell would he risk it.
He folded his arms behind his head and closed his eyes, pretending to fall asleep. Lauren hesitated, not moving for several heartbeats, but she took a shaky breath and crept around the mattress to the side closest to the fire. More rustling revealed she moved the blankets and sheets and a pillow around. Her scent washed over him as she curled up, practically on the edge of the mattress, and adjusted the nest she’d made. He worried she would be cold in the night, but mentioning anything while he was supposed to be asleep would probably scare the shit out of her and then neither of them would be able to relax.
The narcotics started to drag him away as everything relaxed and grew fuzzy, and he sighed. She was in reach. He just had to remember, she was safe and within reach if anything happened. Besides, she already saw him change once. If he had to go bear to protect her, he would. He started to turn toward her but the pain lighting up his leg reminded him to stay where he was. Finn clenched his jaw. Staying away from her would be harder than he’d thought.