Chapter 2 #2
He studies me for a beat, then nods. “Eczema. Moderate to severe flare. Stress-triggered, most likely.” He rummages in his bag and pulls out a tube of cream, setting it on the side table.
“Twice a day on the affected areas. Gentle pressure, no rubbing. She’ll need fragrance-free everything: soap, detergent, the works.
And rest. Real rest. Not the kind where she’s running on cortisol and pretending she’s fine. ”
He says that last part as if he can read the woman’s entire history in her skin. Maybe he can. I file every word.
“She needs monitoring. Wake her every few hours for the concussion. If she vomits, can’t track your finger, or the headache gets significantly worse, you call me.”
“I will.”
He glances at the cream, then at me. “The ointment needs applying. Sooner is better.”
I look at Jenna’s arms. The angry red patches disappearing under her sleeves. The skin she keeps covered. The vulnerability she hasn’t chosen to show me.
“Maggie will do it,” I say.
Doc Henderson nods without judgment, just the quiet approval of someone who’s watched enough young ranchers to know the difference between the ones who take what they want and the ones who wait to be invited.
He leaves with instructions and a handshake. I find Maggie in the kitchen and hand her the cream.
“Her arms,” I say. “Doc says twice a day. Gentle pressure.”
Maggie takes the tube without comment, but her eyes soften in a way that tells me she’s filing this alongside every other thing she knows about me.
I wait in the hallway.
Through the half-open door, I hear the quiet sounds of Maggie working. The click of the cap. A murmured, “There you go, honey,” that Jenna probably can’t hear from a woman who’s tended to people her whole life.
My hands ball into fists. Not because I want to be the one in there—though I do, God help me—but because she doesn’t know me yet. Not really. She knows my voice. She doesn’t know my hands. And until she does, until she offers that, I don’t get to touch her skin like it’s mine to take care of.
The door opens. Maggie steps out, screws the cap back on, and presses the tube into my palm.
“She didn’t wake,” Maggie says. “But she settled. Soon as I started, she stopped flinching.”
My throat tightens. I put the cream in my pocket, where I’ll carry it until she’s awake enough to decide for herself who touches her.
I go back to the chair, sit down, and wait.
A few hours before lunch, her fingers twitch against the blanket.
A small inhale—the sound of someone surfacing from a deep sleep.
Her brow furrows, and even now, even half-conscious, a crease settles between her eyebrows as if she’s solving something.
Working. She’s always working. Even when she’s unconscious.
Her eyes open.
Brown. Dark and warm and unfocused. She blinks and takes in the room, the unfamiliar ceiling, the blanket she doesn’t remember, the light through windows that aren’t hers. I watch confusion cross her face. Then fear. She grips the blanket.
“You’re okay,” I murmur. “You’re safe.”
Her eyes find mine. She’s looking at a stranger in an armchair in a room she’s never been in.
She has no reason to know me. We’ve never exchanged photos.
She’s never seen my face. But something shifts behind her eyes.
I can see her searching, listening. Not my features, but my voice.
She heard me, and something in her is reaching for that familiarity, sorting through six months of phone calls and late-night conversations and the register I drop into when I say her name.
“Ethan.”
My name on her lips is whispered and certain. She knows me the way I know her. Not by sight but by something built from six months of talking and the slow work of letting someone in.
My jaw works. My hands, which were steady through the rescue, the carrying, the waiting, now shake.
“Yeah.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. “Yeah, Jen. It’s me.”
The relief on her face is so total that it looks like pain. Her eyes are wet. She tries to speak, but her body is already pulling her back under. Exhaustion is winning now that her adrenaline is spent. Recognition is the last thing she can offer before the dark takes her again.
Jenna’s eyes close, and her breathing evens out. I sit in the armchair with my hands shaking after hearing her whisper my name. It plays on a loop in my skull like something I’ll never unhear.
The part of me that files everything—that maps pain and tracks what people need and builds systems of care so nobody has to ask—already knows what she means to me. Has known since our second phone call. A knowledge cemented when she curled her fingers so trustingly into my jacket in the dark.
Bug, the feral gray kitten who won’t let anyone touch him, walks over, circles twice, and curls against her hip like he’s been doing it his whole life. Cats know. They find the person who needs them.
She wasn’t supposed to be here for another week. She was coming on Thursday. In daylight. With a plan.
Instead, she’s here now. I found her alone in a ditch at four in the morning, with bitten nails and a flare so bad that her body is screaming something her mouth won’t say.
Something made her run.
She makes a sound in her sleep, and her fingers tighten on the edge of the blanket.
I lean forward, bracing my elbows on my knees with my hands clasped because if I don’t hold them still, they’ll reach for her, and she hasn't given me permission. I don’t take what hasn't been offered.
The broth is cold. I haven’t moved. I’m not going to.
I close my eyes and listen to her breathe.
And I stay.