Chapter 7 — Carina
I stand under the hot water with my hands braced against the tile and try to make sense of what I'm feeling.
The steam fills the small bathroom and the heat soaks into my muscles and I'm going over the last twelve hours in my head.
Tate's call at three-thirty in the morning, my hands shaking as I grabbed my medical bag.
The drive here with my heart beating so hard I could feel it in my throat. Walking into Roan's living room and seeing him on the couch with blood soaking through the bandaging on his shoulder.
The immediate cold clarity that settled over me when I saw the wound. The way my hands stopped shaking and my breathing steadied and I became exactly who I needed to be.
That's what keeps circling back as I stand here.
Not the fear or the adrenaline or the shock of seeing him hurt.
The fact that I didn't fall apart. The fact that when I knelt on his bathroom floor and cleaned blood off his skin and irrigated a bullet hole and re-bandaged it, my hands were completely steady.
The fact that he let me.
He sat on the edge of his bathtub at four in the morning and let me take care of him. Didn't push me away, didn't insist he could handle it himself, didn't default to the self-sufficiency that's kept him functional for twenty years. He just sat there and let me do what needed doing.
And then he kissed me desperate and raw on that same bathroom floor and we fell asleep in his bed wrapped around each other.
This morning he told me he wants me to stay. Not for a few days. Permanently. Told me the danger won't go away and the club comes first sometimes and he can't promise safe or easy or uncomplicated.
Then asked me to choose him anyway.
I press my forehead against the cool tile and let the water run down my back.
I'm terrified. Last night made the violence real in a way I can't unsee. Zoe was kidnapped by men who wanted to use her as leverage.
Roan has a bullet hole through his shoulder from getting her back. This is not theoretical danger I can rationalize away.
This is blood on tile and a wound I treated with my own hands and the knowledge that next time the call might come and he doesn't make it home.
But here's what I keep coming back to: my hands were steady. When I saw the wound and the blood and the reality of what a bullet does to human tissue, I didn't panic.
I assessed and treated with the same focus and competence I bring to emergencies at the clinic. I was capable. I was exactly who I needed to be in that moment.
And he was honest.
He didn't ask me to be different or softer or smaller to fit into his life. He laid out exactly what his world involves and told me to decide if I could handle it.
That's not what happened in Harrisburg.
In Harrisburg I spent eighteen months making myself smaller and quieter and more accommodating. I adjusted what I needed and changed what I wanted and disappeared into someone else's life because I thought that's what love required. I thought partnership meant accommodation at any cost.
But Roan isn't asking me to accommodate at my own expense.
He's asking me to choose with full information.
He's being brutally honest about the danger and the violence and the fact that the club will always come first in certain situations.
He's not asking me to pretend those things don't exist or convince myself I can change them.
He's asking me to look at all of it clearly and decide if he's worth it anyway.
That's partnership. That's what I realized at dinner when we sat in his living room and talked about Zoe and my ex and what we both left behind.
The difference between accommodation that's mutual and accommodation that's diminishment.
And last night proved it. He told me his world was dangerous and then I lived the proof and I handled it.
I showed up and I was steady and I took care of him and neither of us had to be anything other than exactly who we are.
The water is starting to cool. I turn it off and stand there dripping, the choice crystallizing in front of me with absolute clarity.
I can leave. Drive back to my clinic and my rental house and the controlled life I've built for myself.
Safe and predictable and entirely mine. No danger, no violence, no calls at four in the morning telling me someone I care about has been shot.
Or I can stay. Enter his world with all its complications and risks and impossibilities. Build something with a man who lives outside the law and carries a weapon and might come home bleeding or not come home at all.
But standing here in his bathroom, I realize something that's been building since the moment I met him: I'm not the same woman who left Harrisburg eighteen months ago.
I'm stronger now. More certain of who I am and what I can handle. I know where my boundaries are and how to enforce them and the difference between losing myself and choosing to build something with someone else.
Being with Roan won't make me smaller. It will make me more myself because he sees me clearly and wants exactly what he sees.
I want this. I want him. I want to wake up in his bed and show up when things go wrong and build something real with someone who's honest about what it costs and what it gives.
I make my choice.
I grab a towel off the rack and dry myself quickly, my skin still damp and warm from the shower. Walk into his bedroom wrapped in just the towel, and make a decision.
I open the top drawer and pull out the first t-shirt I find, plain gray cotton that's soft and worn from years of washing. Pull it on over my head and it hangs to mid-thigh, the fabric thin enough that I can see the outline of my body through it.
The neck is stretched out and it smells like him, motor oil and clean soap and something that's just Roan.
I drop the towel and leave everything else on the floor. Walk barefoot down the hallway toward the kitchen with my pulse beating hard and my skin still warm from the shower.
I'm absolutely certain.
He's sitting at the kitchen table with a coffee cup in front of him and when I walk through the doorway he looks up.
His whole body goes still. His eyes track over me slowly, taking in the wet hair and the thin t-shirt and the fact that I'm clearly not wearing anything underneath it.
I watch his jaw tighten and his hands grip the edge of the table and the want that crosses his face is so raw it makes my breath catch.
I stop in the doorway and look at him looking at me.
"I'm in," I tell him. "I'm choosing this. I'm choosing you."
The relief that floods his expression is immediate and devastating. Then he's moving, standing and crossing to me in three long strides.
His hands come up to frame my face and his mouth comes down on mine and the kiss is hard and hungry and entirely without restraint.
He kisses me like he's been holding back and now that he has permission he's letting everything loose.
His tongue slides against mine and his hands drop from my face to my waist, gripping me through the thin cotton and pulling me flush against him.
I can feel him already hard against my stomach and the knowledge sends heat flooding straight between my legs.
His hands slide under the t-shirt and find bare skin. He makes a rough sound low in his chest when he realizes I'm completely naked underneath and his fingers dig into my hips hard enough that I know I'll have marks tomorrow.
"Bedroom," he says against my mouth. "Right now."
I start walking backward and he comes with me, our mouths still fused together. I'm trying to navigate while kissing him and I misjudge the hallway, my shoulder hitting the doorframe hard enough to hurt.
He catches me immediately, one hand coming up to steady me while the other stays locked on my hip.
We make it to the bedroom and he kicks the door closed behind us with enough force that it slams.
Then his hands are everywhere, sliding up under the shirt to cup my breasts, his palms rough and warm against sensitive skin.
He thumbs my nipples and I arch into the touch, making a sound that's somewhere between a gasp and a moan.
He pulls the shirt up and over my head in one smooth motion and suddenly I'm standing in front of him completely naked in the morning light streaming through the window.
For half a second the old instinct surfaces, the impulse to cover myself or apologize for taking up space. But then I see how he's looking at me and that impulse dies completely.
His eyes move over my body with deliberate slowness.
My breasts, full and heavy with pale pink nipples already tight from want. My soft stomach that curves out from my ribcage. My wide hips and thick thighs.
He's looking at me like he wants to memorize every detail, like every curve is exactly what he's been wanting to see.
"Jesus," he says, voice rough and low. "Look at you."
His hands follow where his eyes just were.
Up my sides to cup my breasts, his thumbs brushing over my nipples in slow circles that make my knees weak.
Then down over my stomach, not rushing past it or avoiding it but touching me deliberately, his palms warm against the soft skin there.
Lower to grip my hips, his fingers digging into flesh that gives under the pressure. He pulls me against him and I can feel how hard he is through his jeans, the thick length of him pressing into my stomach.
"Get on the bed," he tells me.
I climb onto the mattress and turn to watch him strip. He pulls his t-shirt over his head slowly because of the bandaging and I get my first real look at his bare chest.
Broad and solid with a scatter of dark hair, thick arms corded with muscle, the white bandaging on his left shoulder stark against tanned skin.
His hands go to his belt and I watch him unbuckle it and shove his jeans and boxers down in one motion.
Then he's naked too and I see all of him for the first time. The defined lines of his abdomen, the V of muscle leading down to where he's hard and thick and ready, jutting up toward his stomach.
He's bigger than I expected and for a second I wonder if this is going to work.