Chapter 18 #2
“I’m so sorry.” I blink even faster. “I should never have asked you to stay once this got more dangerous. I don’t know what I was thinking. You’ve already—”
“Dangerous is kind of my thing,” he says, forcing a tight smile, like he doesn’t want me to finish. He crosses his arms over the old wound beneath his ribs, but it leaves the two on his shoulder out in plain sight. “Just forget it.”
But I won’t forget it.
I will never forget it.
I swallow, attempting to maintain my composure. All thoughts of Forensic Files and mouth-shaped bathtubs, gone.
And when I close my eyes to sleep later on, I already know that this sight will be there, right behind my lids. Always.
“I think of you as invincible, Rhett. But you’re . . . you’re not. We can’t . . .” I shake my head, now resolute. “We’re going back tomorrow. I’ll get you a flight out. I don’t know why I tried getting you to stay. You shouldn’t be doing any of this.”
The bed groans when he sits down on his side.
“Bailey, stop,” he says, gently.
“I’ll work with whoever you want to hire for me when we get back to the city,” I tell him, filled with guilt that I insisted it be only him. “I won’t argue this time. You’ve already been through enough without any of this.”
He drops his hands to the mattress, and I study each scar, but especially the one slung low beneath his ribs.
Then, before I can think twice, I shove the line of pillows out of the way.
We can put them all back in a minute, but right now I just want to hug him.
I want to feel how solid he is, and the breath coming in and out of him.
I cross the bed on my knees, and he catches me by the waist, groaning nearly as loud as the springs, when I wrap him up in my arms, still kneeling.
I need to feel him breathe and hear the sound of air filling his lungs.
I know he’s alive, and I know he’s still here, but seeing what happened in the flesh is threatening to pull me apart.
“I’m fine, Bailey,” he mutters into my hair, smoothing it down, and I close my eyes, breathing in the scent of him.
He’s always smelled so good, even without cologne or aftershave or anything else added to the way he is.
“Look at me,” he says. I pull back, and he throws both of his arms out. “I’m practically bulletproof.”
I scoff, like that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, and nearly tell him that being bulletproof is just an illusion. He might not be so lucky next time, but I don’t.
Instead, I ignore the idiotic shit he’s just said and lean in to keep hugging him, waiting until his arms are firmly wrapped around me again before allowing myself to exhale.
I don’t need to be the one to tell him that he’s not immortal when I’m the one testing that right now.
“Shut up and just let me hug you for a minute,” I tell him, wishing the scent of his neck was the only thing racing through me, while I’m stuck racing through our other options.
I never should have let him follow me into this mess, even though it was my idea for him to come, and I wish we could sleep kneeling upright like this, just to keep myself from losing my grip on him again.
His arms tighten around me, and I close my eyes until I forget that we’re in the Tiger Motel, a mirror bolted to the ceiling. On the run from someone who might try to hurt him in a jealous rage, just to get to me.
When I slowly pull back, he catches a dumb tear sliding down my cheek with the back of his index finger, fighting gravity for me, as if fighting everything else in the world wasn’t already enough.
When his eyes land on mine, something between us shifts. Past the initial niceties and the “no, you choose what we watch on TV tonight” like we’ve been doing for the last few days.
This isn’t a game. And it’s not something we can peel back or start over again.
“No use crying over it anymore, kid,” he says, gently. “All this was a long time ago.”
“Hardly,” I answer, sniffing. “It could have been twenty years ago and I’d still have a good cry about it. Seeing it for the first time like this? God. I’ve heard about everything that happened, but seeing it with my own eyes is different.”
I tuck my lips in between my teeth to stop my chin from trembling.
“I know it’s ugly but just try to forget it.”
“It’s not ugly,” I tell him, but his face hardens.
“The only ugliness about it is that it happened at all. Let’s go back to New York.
You can fly home from there and completely change your career path.
You’ve done enough saving to last your whole life.
What do you think about working in IT? Or learning how to cook?
I hear accounting is nice and predictable. ”
His face softens, like he’s trying to show me how ridiculous any of that sounds.
“You think I could be sitting at home?” he asks. Then he swipes another tear back up my cheek and pushes back my hair, smiling like I should be, too. “While you’re over here facing all this by yourself? Not a chance in hell, Bay. I’d take a bullet any day of the week if it meant keeping you safe.”
My exhale shudders on the way out because I know that what he’s just said is true. And nothing about that makes me feel any better right now.
“But you didn’t even want to come back, so you can go,” I whisper. “You’re only here because Hollis called in a favor and you’ve done that so—”
“Look at me,” he says, waiting until my eyes flood into his. Then he points to each scar on the front of his shoulder. “This and this messed me up pretty good.”
“You were in PT for months, I know. I remember the sling you were wearing that Christmas.”
“But this one?” He points to the biggest patch of gnarled skin, the one beneath his ribs.
“This is the one that kept me from coming back. To anything, Bay. Not just you. But I’m back now, and there’s no leaving again.
Not while we’re sitting in the middle of nowhere after some guy broke in to your place. ”
“Hollis said you almost didn’t make it after that bullet hit you.”
“I didn’t. But it was more than that. After everything healed, I was dealing with what it did to me up here.” He points to his temple, and the ice in his eyes liquefies. “I made one very big mistake. And that mistake has haunted me every day.”
“But you got that little boy out. I saw the footage of him returning home. You did exactly what you should have done.”
“That’s not true,” he says, quietly. “I’ve run through every scenario on repeat, over and over, since it happened.
And every time, it boils down to one thing.
I let myself get distracted for one second and that one second cost Cory everything.
It cost his wife her husband, and his baby girl her father.
Yes, the boy we went in to save did make it out.
But my buddy didn’t. All of us should have been in the vehicle by the time Cory went down.
And now, I’m here, trusting myself to keep you safer than I kept him.
Which is exactly why I need to stay. Because leaving you in the middle of this without me would be another mistake — and that’s one I will never make. ”
I force myself to stop picturing what could happen if we get caught off guard, or if this creep turns out to be more dangerous than any of us think. If Rhett’s not leaving, then I don’t know how we do this.
“How do we wake up tomorrow and keep going, knowing someone out there might be hunting us down?” I ask. “How do you do it?”
“Because what else is there to do?” he asks, tucking my hair behind my ear.
The feel of his fingers sends a warm tingle down my spine.
He’s never looked at me like this. “Let’s get one thing clear, Bailey.
I was made for this. It’s all I know how to do, and I’ve learned from my past. Believe me, if something serious does end up happening with this guy, I’d only run faster to get between you.
You could put me on a plane tomorrow and I’d still take the next one back. I’m not leaving until this is over.”
I hold his gaze. The curve of his eyes. The tone of his voice. There’s no changing his mind. And I already know that I’ll fight the idea of him leaving after this is all over, too.
“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” I whisper, running my fingertip over the warbled patch near his collarbone. “Do they still hurt?”
He takes my fingers, squeezing them gently before dropping my hand away from his skin. His eyes are soft, but laced with uncertainty.
“They did. But not anymore. It’s bad enough to think about it, let alone see these every time I take my shirt off.”
I force myself to smile. “Well, I would say that you could leave a shirt on for the rest of your life, but that would be a real shame.” I hope he laughs.
It pours out of him suddenly, and I grin, wishing I could bottle up the sound.
“Can I?” I ask for permission this time, raising a hand back up, hoping he’ll let me in. How lonely would it feel to have a part of you that you were too afraid to look at, let alone allow someone else to feel?
He nods and inhales sharply when my fingers make contact with the first scar again. The marred skin on his shoulder is slightly colder than the rest of him.
“I’m sorry, I just—” But I stop, forgetting what I wanted to say, when I notice his eyes watching me while my fingers trace the outline.
And I remember what it feels like to speak to him without words.
Using a language that’s as silent as the room.
Running my fingers from one end to the other and back again, gently tracing the edge while he watches my lips, my eyes, my cheeks, just inches away from his own. His breath skating past my cheek.
I so badly want to kiss the skin that’s changed. To show him that no one on earth could fault him for these marks, but I don’t.
“You know, I’ve heard that girls find scars attractive,” I tell him. He cracks a smile, and I grin. “These are very much a part of your story. Your very first plot twist.”