13. Paxton
Well, that was a skate blade to the chest. Not that I should’ve been surprised by Hana’s admission. She sat there, her expression tortured and miserable, with longing calling to me from her brown eyes. And I ached to hold her, to fix the muddle I’d created.
I cursed my younger self, railed against my stupidity, all silently. She didn’t need to hear my self-flagellation. She needed me to prove myself better than I had been years before. To put her first. To show her with my actions, every day, that she was my top priority.
That was much easier to say than to prove. Yet, I must prove it, probably many times, before Hana would lose that haunted look.
With unsteady hands, I unbuckled my seatbelt. “I’d like to hold you now. Please, Hana. I know I can’t wipe away the past. I can only start here and prove to you that I’m yours, that I’ll be with you every step of the way.” I edged a little closer, and when she didn’t shy away, I gently gathered her, holding her to my heart.
“Even when I freak out and am sure you’re going to run again?” Her reply was muffled against my chest.
I hated that she asked that, but we were analytical thinkers. It was logical, and it was probable. “Yeah, even then. Because I love you, Hana. I do. I never stopped. I can’t stop. It’s part of me, like breathing. So if you need me to prove it over and over again, I get that. I respect it, too.”
“I’m not sure that’s fair…”
I breathed in the scent of her hair, nuzzling her scalp. “You and I both know emotions aren’t logical. They just are. And if you need me to prove myself, I can do that. Hell, I probably should do that.”
Her shoulders eased. “No, Paxton. I’m not testing you. That would be wrong. You don’t deserve?—”
I gave her a gentle squeeze, which caused her to stop talking. I pulled away from her warmth so I could meet her eyes. I cupped her cheeks, enjoying the feel of her smooth skin. “I want to deserve you. We both deserve happiness, fulfillment. How we get there will be our way. No one else’s.”
She studied me, those dark eyes taking in each nuance of my expression. “Do you think we can?”
Something in the way she asked, in the slight breathlessness of her voice, in the yearning that slipped into her eyes, made me sure she wanted that future as much as I did.
But this was what happened when you shattered something precious. It never slipped back together seamlessly. There was always work and effort—maybe blood and tears and cursing and the desire to give up already—before the beauty was once more whole. Though not the same, never the same.
But whole.
“Yes, Hana. We can,” I told her. “If we work together. Talk to each other, open up to one another even when being vulnerable is like walking naked in a snowstorm…”
Her lips quirked up in a faint smile. I wanted to kiss her but held back. Damn, that was hard.
“Like you were willing to do now. That was fucking brave. I won’t take you or your feelings for granted. Not ever again.”
“Thank you.” She shuddered out a painful breath. “You’d walk naked in a blizzard for me?” She giggled as I rolled my eyes.
“No. I might love you, but there are parts of me I don’t want to freeze off.”
She giggled harder, and I smiled. This, right here, this was what I’d missed. What I’d craved and searched for…
And found only with Hana.
* * *
Dinner was a boisterous affair.But we Wildcatters weren’t known for being halfway kind of men, and our women were just as passionate and strong-willed as we were. How else would we manage to work together? We needed that strength of purpose to balance our own.
I stared into my iced tea as these thoughts swirled through my head. I was becoming like Cruz—a philosopher, a deep thinker. Losing Hana, which had been like amputating a limb, had created this more introspective part of me. I still couldn’t understand why my father had pushed me to sever our relationship, but I knew now that his constant pushing had caused me deep harm. And that pain made me much more likely to stand up for what I believed in moving forward.
Never again, I promised myself as I looked over at Hana. She was having an animated conversation with Keelie and Ida Jane about tardigrades, of all things.
“She’s a pretty cool chick,” Maxim said. He’d scooted closer, ensuring that his words were for my ears alone. “I wasn’t sure if she’d suit you, our crew, after she ran from Ida Jane. But I see it now. Her strength isn’t in fighting back. It’s in knowing when to retreat.”
That Maxim had realized this almost at the same time I did proved I still had a long way to go on this Cruz-level philosophizing. “She’s my other half,” I told him. I didn’t bother to lower my voice, because Hana deserved to know what I was thinking and feeling. I’d never hide what I felt for her, never try to bury it or make light of it again.
She stiffened a little as my words hit her, but smiled. I felt it warm my soul.
“Yeah, I can see that,” Cormac said. He was across the table from me. He’d leaned back and laid a hand on his flat belly, his legs stretched out in front of him. He looked like an indolent ruler, except that he rubbed Keelie’s arm with his free hand, seeming unable to stop touching her. “And I get it. Totally. When that piece clicks, the world just seems…right.”
“Speaking of right, it’s about time for our baby to go down for the night, and I need to feed him,” Keelie said. She pushed back from the table and rose, with Cormac in tow.
Could Hana and I ever be that in sync? We had been once. Logic stated that we could get there again. Eventually.
I took a sip of my tea, needing the liquid to rinse the bad taste from my mouth. Patience wasn’t my forte. I was a work-hard-get-results kind of man.
We all rose and said our goodbyes. Hana’s eyes widened when Keelie enveloped her in a hug, but she offered her cheek for Cormac’s brotherly kiss, which she returned with a soft pat on his biceps. Then she turned back toward the dining area, a grimace cresting her expression even as she offered to help Maxim and Ida Jane clean up. Thankfully, Maxim had seen that look—and knew what it meant.
“We will clear up. You need to get off that leg.”
Well, so much for the gentle suggestion I’d planned on.
“Is it bad?” Ida Jane asked. “I don’t mean to pry, but I saw you shiftin’ around and, well, I figure it must hurt…”
I held my breath, waiting. Hana gave me a contemplative look before she said, “It does hurt, pretty much constantly. Nerves were damaged, and they can fritz out on me, but the main issue is that I lost a lot of the connective tissue around my knee joint. For a while, saving it was touch-and-go.”
“That had to be scary,” Ida Jane murmured, eyes wide.
“It was.”
Those simple words unleashed a maelstrom inside me. So. Much. Guilt.
Hana must have seen it, because she took my hand and squeezed.
“How did they save it if the tissue was compromised?” Maxim asked. He frowned at her leg, not paying attention to me.
I wanted to know the answer as well, but I didn’t want Hana to feel pressured.
“There’s a newer technique that allowed my orthopedist to add cartilage from a cadaver to my patella,” Hana explained. “The problem was that the way my leg broke—at my shin near my ankle, then just below my knee, just above my knee, and at my pelvis—left me immobilized for months, which caused muscle atrophy. So this leg is shorter than the other.”
“Ah. The limp.” Maxim nodded. “But shouldn’t the muscle tissue return with proper therapy and workouts?”
Hana chewed her lip, then shocked me by crouching and pulling up the hem of her wide-legged pants.
“You don’t have to…” I began. But I stopped when I caught sight of the mass of pink and faded scar tissue that ran up and around her pale skin from the top of her boot—and probably lower—to the hemline of her pants, which now rested above her knee.
Maxim leaned in, studying. He tilted his head as he pointed at three separate lines of scar tissue around her knee. “These were the surgeries?”
“Some of them. Those gave me back cartilage and repaired tendons. But this is what I wanted to show you.” Hana touched the longest scar, which ran along the side of her shin bone to meet the ones Maxim had been looking at. “Initially, the orthopedist put pins along this incision to reconnect the bone fragments, but it was splintered in too many places, so they had to go in and shore up the bone with more metal.”
“Your leg is titanium, then? Indestructible.”
Hana wrinkled her nose and dropped her pants back in place. “Definitely not indestructible. And not a superhero. My body continues to reject the metal they used. We’ve tried two different alloys. If my immune system continues to target it, they’ll probably have to amputate my leg.”