Chapter Thirty-Five
BY THE TIME I got her back to the cabin, I’d washed my hands three times.
Once at the clubhouse sink while Horse stood beside me and didn’t say a word, once in Josie’s kitchen because I looked down and found blood still dried into the lines around my nails, and then again here, at my own sink, with Amy sitting on the bed ten feet behind me while I ran the water hot enough to turn my hands red.
I knew they were clean. I’d known it the second time, probably the first, but I kept scrubbing anyway because every time I looked at them I saw that room again, saw his hand around her throat and her body hitting that concrete, and there are some things soap doesn’t do a damn thing for.
“Rune.”
“Yeah.”
“They’re clean.”
I shut the water off and stood there a second with both hands braced on the sink, head down, listening to her breathe behind me.
I’d spent the better part of that morning believing I might never hear that sound again, and now she was ten feet away, alive and safe in my cabin, and somehow turning around to look at her felt harder than coming through that door had.
I dried my hands and did it anyway.
She’d showered at the clubhouse before we came down, Brenda helping her while Horse and I stood outside. Her hair was still wet, combed back from her face so there was nothing hiding the bruise coming up along her jaw.
Or the marks around her throat.
My eyes caught there and stayed too long, and something ugly started moving through me again, so I made myself look away before it got any ground.
“Come here,” I said.
She looked around my cabin. “I’m already here.”
“Smartass.”
Her mouth moved, barely, but it moved. Banged up, exhausted, and she still had enough Amy left in her to give me shit. It wasn’t much of a smile, but I’d have taken less.
I pulled the chair from beside the window and set it in front of her, then sat with the first-aid kit between my boots and started laying things out.
“You know Mystic already did all this.”
“Mystic isn’t me.”
“No. He’s much more pleasant.”
I looked up at her until that little almost-smile came back, then wet a piece of gauze and reached for her face.
My hand stopped before I touched her. I didn’t mean for it to. Didn’t even know I’d done it until I saw her eyes drop to the space between my fingers and her skin, and when she looked back at me there was something in her face that told me she understood before I did.
“Rune.”
“Yeah.”
“You can touch me.”
My throat tightened. “I know.”
“No, you don’t.”
Before I could answer, she took hold of my wrist and brought my hand the rest of the way to her face herself, settling my palm against her cheek like there had never been any question whether those hands belonged there.
There wasn’t a thing in this world that could’ve prepared me for what that did to me.
Her skin was warm.
Alive.
That was the word my mind kept giving me, over and over, no matter how many times I tried to move past it. Alive in my bed, alive under my hand, alive and looking at me with those violet eyes while my heart tried to beat its way through my ribs.
I swallowed and ran my thumb carefully beneath the bruise. “Jaw hurt when you open?”
“A little.”
“Teeth?”
“Fine.”
“Headache?”
“Yes.”
“Nauseous?”
“No.”
“Dizzy?”
“Not anymore.”
“You black out?”
“I don’t think so.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I got hit, Rune. My memory of the experience isn’t exactly organized alphabetically.”
I shut my eyes Bad idea. The room came back before I’d even finished the breath, his hand around her throat, her face, the sound that had come out of me when I saw her on that floor.
I’d spent a lifetime learning how to keep myself cold when cold was useful, but there hadn’t been a cold place left in me when I came through that door.
“Hey.”
I opened my eyes. Amy was watching me, and the fact that there wasn’t any fear in her face nearly did me in worse than if there had been.
“I’m okay,” she said.
“Don’t.”
Her forehead creased. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t tell me you’re okay because you think I need to hear it.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re not okay.”
“I know.”
“Good.”
She blinked. “That’s a weird response.”
“Need you telling me the truth.”
“I am.”
I nodded and went back to work because work I understood.
There wasn’t much left for me to do, Mystic had already cleaned the split inside her lip, nothing looked broken, her breathing was good, and she’d been checked over, but I found reasons anyway.
I looked at the scrape on her palm and the raw place on her elbow, checked her wrists, ran my fingers carefully over the back of her head, because apparently some part of me believed if I checked enough times I could prove she was really here.
Eventually Amy caught my hand. “Rune.”
I stopped.
“There’s nothing else.”
“I know.”
“You’ve checked.”
“I know.”
“Three times.”
“Probably.”
She kept hold of my hand, looking down at it where it sat inside hers, and for a while neither of us said anything.
Then the question I’d been trying not to ask came out anyway. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
She didn’t pretend she didn’t understand. “He had Sawyer.”
“Why didn’t you find me?”
“I couldn’t take the chance.”
“You should have.”
“He said he’d kill him if I did.”
“You know I would have found a way.”
“Yeah. That’s the point.”
I sat back a little. “What?”
“I knew what you’d do, Rune. I knew you’d come after me, and Devil would come, and Bolt and Horse and everybody else would come because that’s what all of you do. He said he had eyes on the place.”
“You believed him.”
“Yeah.”
“So you went.”
“What was I supposed to do?”
“Anything but that.” It came out loud before I could stop it, and I saw the smallest movement go through her.
A flinch.
Barely one.
Enough.
I was out of that chair before I knew I’d stood, putting three steps between us and both hands on top of my head because I would cut my own tongue out before I became another man that scared her.
“Rune—”
“No.” I turned back toward her. “I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“I raised my voice.”
I stared at her, and she stared right back before patting the mattress beside her. “Come here.”
“Amy—”
“Rune.”
So I went, because there would never be a version of my life now where she asks me to come to her and I don’t.
I sat beside her but left some space between us, and she looked down at it, looked back at me, and gave a tired little sigh like I was the difficult one here before sliding across the mattress and putting herself against my side.
My arms went around her before I had time to think about it.
I pulled her in carefully, one arm around her back and the other across her legs, until her head was against my chest and I could feel every breath she took.
For a while neither of us said anything, and I didn’t need us to.
She was here. I could feel her weight against me, feel her fingers curled into the front of my shirt, and right then that was about all the world I could handle.
“I was scared,” she said eventually.
My hand stopped on her back.
“I know.”
“No. I mean I was really scared.”
I closed my eyes again, but this time I kept the room out.
“I thought he would kill me.”
There are sentences a man hears and knows he’s going to carry until somebody puts him in the ground and that was one.
Her fingers tightened in my shirt. “But Sawyer got to you.”
I couldn’t get anything past my throat.
“I knew he would.”
“He near drove through Brenda’s flower bed,” I chuckled, trying to lighten the mood.
A breath of a laugh moved against my chest, so small I almost missed it. “That sounds like him.”
“Purple shirt and all.”
“Lavender.”
“Whatever.”
“There is a difference.”
“Don’t give a shit.”
“You should. He does.”
I put my mouth against the top of her head and closed my eyes, because there she was again, coming back in little pieces, and I’d take every damn one of them as they came.
“I love you,” she said, holding me closer.
“I love you, too,” I replied, and pulled us up the bed so we were lying down. I bowed my head, and she came with me until her forehead rested against mine.
For a while I just breathed.
Her fingers slipped into mine. “Rune?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m tired.”
“Then sleep.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
That hurt, but I didn’t let it show.
“Alright.”
She waited, maybe expecting more, and when it didn’t come she asked, “What if I can’t?”
“Then you can’t. We’ll lie here awhile and find out.”
Her eyes searched mine. “No promises?”
For a while she stayed awake. I could feel her fighting it at first, waiting for whatever was waiting behind her eyes, but little by little the tension went out of her and her breathing started to change, getting slower and deeper until mine matched it without me meaning to.
I didn’t know anymore which one of us was following the other.
Just before she went under, her fingers tightened once in my shirt. “I feel so safe with you.”
My eyes burned, and I pressed my mouth to her hair. “I’ll always be here.”
She slept.
I stayed awake awhile longer with her warm and breathing against me, one hand spread over her back, listening until I was sure she’d gone all the way under. Then sometime after dark, with the cabin quiet and Amy safe where I could reach her, my eyes closed too.