Chapter 7
Saoirse
It started raining around six, soft and steady, the kind of spring rain that doesn't announce itself so much as simply arrive and settle in.
Elias had invited me over for dinner — actual dinner this time, not the improvised chicken-and-dish-towel chaos from my kitchen, but something he'd planned, candles and all, which struck me as almost sweetly overdone until I remembered this was a man who'd once planned troop movements for a living.
Of course he'd bring that same precision to a date.
"You didn't have to do all this," I said, taking in the table — set properly, cloth napkins, a bottle of wine he'd clearly researched rather than grabbed at random.
"I wanted to." He pulled out my chair, an old-fashioned gesture that shouldn't have undone me as much as it did. "Figured you deserved better than dish towels thrown at your head."
"That was one time, and you deserved it."
"I stand by my chicken critique."
He'd made something with rosemary and lemon, chicken again, though this time it was clearly not guesswork — precise, careful, the kind of cooking that comes from a man who'd once had to feed a whole platoon on limited supplies and learned exactly how to make the most of what he had.
"This is genuinely good," I said, around a mouthful I probably shouldn't have talked through.
"High praise from a woman who witnessed my sister-in-arms, the dish towel."
"That incident happened in my kitchen. This is your kitchen. Different jurisdiction."
"Ah. So you're grading on a curve."
"I contain multitudes. Some of those multitudes are extremely fair judges of culinary jurisdiction." I refilled my wine glass, watching candlelight flicker across the table between us. "Where'd you learn to cook like this? Please don't say Grandma. I'll get emotional over chicken."
"Partially Grandma. Partially the Army, believe it or not — you learn to make a lot out of very little when you're feeding twelve guys off two camp stoves. Doc used to say I had a gift for turning MREs into something almost dignified."
"High praise, considering MREs."
"The bar was extremely low. I cleared it anyway." He smiled, easy, unguarded, and something in my chest warmed at how naturally Doc's name had entered the conversation now, without the old flinch that used to accompany it.
Dinner was easy in a way I hadn't expected easy to feel this early — comfortable, funny, full of the kind of small talk that isn't really small at all when it's happening between two people who've already told each other the biggest things.
By the time we finished, rain was falling steadily against the windows, and something in the air between us had shifted into a different kind of quiet.
"Stay," he said, simply, no pretense in it. "Not — I don't mean anything specific by that. Just. Stay a while. Watch the rain with me."
"I'd like that."
We ended up on his couch, windows cracked despite the rain, the smell of wet earth and new green drifting in with the sound of it.
He'd built a fire, small and unnecessary given the season, more atmosphere than warmth, and I found myself watching the light of it flicker across his face instead of the flames themselves.
"You're staring," he said, not looking away from the fire.
"I'm allowed to stare. You're objectively worth staring at."
"That a clinical assessment?"
"That's a personal one. Very unprofessional. I've fully retired from the professional assessments where you're concerned."
He shifted closer, close enough that his arm settled around my shoulders, and I felt the warmth of him along my side, steady as everything else about him.
"Tell me something," I said, watching the fire instead of him now, some old habit of giving people room to answer without the pressure of a direct gaze. "What made tonight the night? You could've asked me to stay any night these past few weeks. Why tonight?"
He considered the question with the same care he gave everything.
"I think I needed to know I could build something first," he said.
"Not just survive. Build. The garden's growing.
I'm sleeping through most nights now. I rode with the club and didn't flinch once.
I wanted — I don't know. I wanted to come to you as a man who had something to offer, not just someone leaning on you for the next thing that might save him. "
"You always had something to offer, Elias. From the very first session."
"Maybe. But I didn't believe that yet. I do now. Mostly because of you, if I'm honest, but I needed the mostly to become fully before I let myself want this the way I've wanted it for weeks."
"That's a very honest answer."
"I've got a good teacher for honesty too.
" He turned to look at me properly, firelight catching the gray-green of his eyes, something unguarded and open in his expression that I'd only glimpsed in fragments before tonight.
"Can I kiss you?" he asked. "I've been wanting to since roughly the tomato incident, and I've been extremely patient about it, and I'd like some credit for that patience before I stop being patient entirely. "
"You've been very patient," I agreed. "I think you've earned it."
He kissed me slowly, carefully, like he was relearning something he hadn't let himself want in longer than he could say.
His hand came up to my jaw, thumb tracing along my cheekbone with the same careful attention he brought to everything — the garden, the exercises, the whole slow work of putting himself back together.
I kissed him back with everything I'd been holding since that first Thursday in the rehab wing, all the weeks of careful professional distance finally, gladly abandoned.
"I want you," he said, against my mouth, quiet and rough. "I need you to know that's not gratitude talking. That's not relief talking. That's just — you. All of you. I want all of you."
"I want you too." I pulled back just far enough to look at him properly. "But I need you to know something first. I've heard you talk about your body like it's something broken, something you're apologizing for. I don't see that. I need you to know that before this goes any further."
"You might see something different once the shirt comes off."
"I doubt it. But if you need to hear it — nothing you show me tonight is going to scare me off, Elias. I've spent my whole career with scarred, rebuilt bodies. I promise you, yours won't be the first miracle I've had the privilege of touching."
Something in his face cracked open at that, vulnerable in a way I hadn't seen from him even in our most honest conversations.
He led me to his bedroom, rain still soft against the windows, the whole house smelling of wet earth and candlewax and him. He was nervous — I could feel it in the careful way he undid the buttons of his shirt, like he was steeling himself for a verdict he'd already decided would be bad.
I didn't let him get there alone.
"Let me," I said, and undid the last few buttons myself, slow and deliberate, giving him the time to breathe through whatever he needed to breathe through.
The scars were extensive — surgical lines tracking down his thigh, the puckered evidence of shrapnel across one hip, the long, careful geometry of eleven pins holding together a leg that had, by every reasonable measure, no business working as well as it did anymore.
I took my time looking at all of it, unhurried, letting him watch me look, letting him see there was nothing in my expression but the same steady warmth that had been there since the garden.
"You're really not going to flinch," he said quietly, half question, half disbelief.
"I'm really not. Give me a reason to, and I still won't. I promise you that."
I kissed each one. Slowly. Deliberately. Not with pity, not with the careful clinical detachment I'd trained myself into over years of treating exactly this kind of wound, but with something closer to reverence — the way you'd honor a thing that had fought and won.
"These aren't damage," I told him, between kisses, my mouth moving over the raised, silvered line where the worst of it had happened. "They're proof. Proof you're still here. Proof you fought for every single day you've gotten since."
"Saoirse." My name came out rough, undone, and I felt him shudder slightly under my mouth, some old tension finally, fully releasing.
"Let me show you," I said. "Let me show you what I see when I look at you."
I moved lower, unhurried, tracing the raised line along his hip with my fingertips before I let my mouth follow the same path, feeling him tense and then, slowly, let go under the attention, breath coming faster, one hand fisting gently in the sheets like he needed something to hold onto while I dismantled every doubt he'd carried into this room.
"I've hated this leg for eight months," he admitted, voice rough. "Hated looking at it. Hated what it means. You're the first person who's ever made me feel like it's not the whole story."
"It's not even close to the whole story," I said, working my way back up his body, unhurried, deliberate. "It's one chapter. A hard one. Not the ending."
I took my time with him — unhurried, thorough, learning the map of his body with the same patience he'd shown learning the map of my grief. His hands found their way into my hair, careful at first and then less careful, a low sound escaping him that had nothing careful left in it at all.
When he finally rolled us, settling his weight over me with the particular gentleness of a man who'd spent his whole life being careful with fragile things, I felt the rain-cooled air move across bare skin, felt the warmth of him settling against me, felt every nerve in my body come alive under his careful, deliberate attention.
"Tell me if anything hurts," he murmured, mouth trailing down my throat, hands finding the curve of my waist like he was memorizing it. "Tell me if I need to stop."
"You won't need to stop." I arched into him, into the slow, steady drag of his mouth against my collarbone, the rasp of his stubble against sensitive skin. "Don't you dare stop."