Chapter 8 #2
My cheeks flamed. Damn him, he was right.
Because even now, standing here in my ratty T-shirt with bedhead and shadows under my eyes, I could feel his hands like they’d never left me.
His thumb tracing circles over my knuckles.
His chest rises steadily under my cheek.
The exact heat and weight of him pressed into the small of my back, the way his breath had warmed the seam of my ear.
Those details had crawled under my skin overnight and refused to leave.
They had settled in like they owned the place.
That was the problem. They had.
“What are you staring at?” I snapped, because anything softer sounded like permission.
“Your face,” he said simply. “You look raw.”
The words were not an insult. They were observing. It somehow made it worse.
I opened my mouth to tell him I didn’t, to say to him I was fine, but the lie tasted like metal. “I’m fine,” I said anyway, the words paper-thin.
“No, you’re not.” He set his coffee down. The sound of ceramic hitting wood was soft, steady. He reached across the table, and for a half second, his fingers brushed mine.
It was barely contact. It was nothing. Just skin against skin at the base of my thumb.
But it sent a shock through me so fast and so bright I nearly dropped the mug.
The contact was both small and enormous at the same time.
It hit the place under my ribs that still felt like it had been kicked.
It hit behind my throat. It hit lower. I hated how quickly my body responded to him. I hated how fast my mind followed.
“You were yelling in your sleep,” he said softly. His hand lingered close, close enough to touch again if I wanted, but not restraining me. “You woke me up.”
The words hung in the air. I stared at the dark line along his wrist, the ridged tendon that flexed when he curled his fingers.
The faint scar near his thumb from when a young colt panicked and caught him with a hoof.
I knew every mark on him. I knew them like landmarks on a map.
I could see them now in perfect clarity. My heart thudded loudly.
“It was nothing,” I answered, too quickly.
“Because of what happened in the trailer,” he corrected. His voice stayed low and even, not pitying, just matter-of-fact. “I stayed because I didn’t want you to be alone.”
My throat closed up. For a second, the room blurred. I could feel last night all over again, as if I were still inside it.
The way the dark had pinned me. The way the inside of my chest had squeezed and seized, and I could not get a full breath, no matter how hard I fought for air.
The way panic made the room tilt, until it no longer felt like Lincoln’s house, but rather like that trailer.
The slam of a heavy fist on thin metal. I couldn't move fast enough.
The way fear made me small and furious at the same time.
It had been all teeth and shaking hands and old damage.
I’d woken up choking his name.
I’d woken up hitting.
He hadn’t let go.
He wrapped his arms around me and pinned me to him, talking me down in that steady, calm voice he only used when things were bad. The same voice he used on spooked horses, injured calves, and me.
I swallowed. My mouth feels dry. I wanted to be furious. I wanted to push him away and tell him he was overstepping, that this was not his job anymore. I wanted to tell him he couldn't rescue me and then act like that meant something.
But my hands remembered the feel of him, just like a guitar remembers a callus. It was ingrained.
Instead, I shoved my palms into my pockets and turned my face away. “You didn’t have to,” I said.
He shrugged, an easy movement, but there was something genuine in it. His shoulders rolled under his shirt. The fabric pulled tight across his chest. “Maybe I wanted to.”
I felt that like a hand on bare skin.
The tiny admission settled between us like a dropped stone, making the kitchen feel too small. The humming fridge, the tick of the wall clock, and the faint rush of wind outside all seemed louder against the quiet of that line.
I took another sip of my coffee, feeling the heat thaw parts of me I’d kept iced for so long. My hands were still shaking. I held the mug tighter to stop it, and the ceramic heat pulsed through my palms and into my wrists. I let it.
“So, what now?” I asked finally. My voice was steady enough to pass. Barely. “We go back to being strangers who occasionally borrow each other’s shampoo? Or…”
My mouth went dry at the end of that sentence. I hated that he could still make me nervous. I hated that I wanted the answer, yet I was scared of it at the same time.
“Or we try to be adults about it.” He sounded careful, like he was navigating glass.
Like one wrong word would send me bolting back up the stairs and slamming a door between us that he would never open again.
“We talk. We set boundaries. We’re married and there won’t be a question about that in anyone’s mind. ”
My laugh was bitter. It came out louder than I meant for it to. “Is this your version of grown-up talk?”
“Maybe.” He looked at me hard. He did not look away. His gaze did not flinch or soften or turn into a joke. He let me see whatever was in there. “Or maybe I don’t want either of us to pretend we didn’t need each other last night.”
I stared at him.
There it was. No swagger, or smart mouth. No armor. Just that line, dropped right in front of me like he had opened a door and dared me to walk through it.
His eyes were steady, earnest in a way that made my knees weak.
The bruising on his face only made it worse.
He looked like a man who would fight anything that touched me.
He looked like a man who already had. He looked like a man who would do it again and again until there was nothing left standing but me.
For one crazy second, I almost let everything fall into place, let myself admit how scared I’d been, how safe his arms had felt, how much I’d hated waking up without them.
I could see myself setting the mug down and walking the two steps across the kitchen and standing between his knees and leaning in until there was no more pretending, he was just watching out of obligation.