Chapter 23 #2
"I cleaned them while you were out. But some of them need to be bandaged. And I need to check for signs of internal bleeding."
His tone was careful, and I could hear what it cost him to even get the words out, so I let him lead me to the sitting area in the bedroom.
He sat me down and knelt on the floor in front of me, and I heard him open something, a first aid kit maybe.
I heard the plastic snap of a case and the rustle of sterile packaging being torn.
He touched my face, and I flinched.
I didn't mean to. It was involuntary—a full-body jerk away from his hand, my muscles locking, my breath catching, my body remembering what those hands had done the last time they'd been this close.
The warehouse slammed back into me with physical force.
His knuckles against my cheekbone, the crack of impact, the way I'd tasted copper on my tongue—
"It's sorry," he said softly. "I should've warned you."
I could hear the pain in his voice, and the way he tried to hide it.
I forced myself still. "It's okay. Go ahead."
He touched me again. Carefully this time. So carefully it almost hurt more than the his fist had.
He cleaned the cut on my cheekbone. Applied something cool that stung and then numbed. His hands were steady. The hands of a man who knew how to take apart a body and, apparently, how to put one back together.
When he was finished, he hesitated—just for a moment—before saying, "I need to check your ribs."
I nodded, and he lifted the hem of my shirt, holding just under my breasts. I felt the air hit the bruised skin and heard his breath catch. A small sound. Barely audible. But I heard everything.
"How bad is it?" I asked.
"It's not good." His fingers mapped the damage with clinical precision, pressing gently at each rib, testing. "But they're not broken. Maybe fractured. How's your stomach?"
"It's okay," I told him. "I'm not nauseous anymore."
"Good. That's good."
He wrapped my torso with a bandage, one arm reaching around my back, the other feeding the bandage, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his body so close to mine. The intimacy of it was unbearable. The hurt and the comfort collapsing into each other until I couldn't separate them.
He finished wrapping, and taped the bandage down. His hands lingered on my waist for a fraction of a second longer than necessary before he pulled them away.
"Your jaw?" He tilted my chin, testing the joint. "Open."
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
His fingers fell away. "Raven—"
But I shook my head. "Don't." He didn't have to say the words. I could hear what he was going to say in the way he touched me and spoke my name. Reaching out, I found his wrist and held it.
He went completely still.
I turned his hand over and ran my thumb across his knuckles. They were swollen and split in places. I could feel the ridges of healing skin, the rough patches where his fists had connected with my body hard enough to break his own skin open.
He'd hurt himself hitting me. Every mark he'd left on my body had cost him, too. Not just emotionally, but physically. His knuckles were a mirror of my bruises, a matching set, cause and effect written in damaged skin.
"These need bandaging too," I said.
"They're fine."
"They're not fine." I held his hand and pressed my thumb into a split knuckle and felt him flinch. "Sit down."
He sat and I stepped closer to him, close enough that our knees touched. I found the first aid kit by feel. Opened it. Located the antiseptic by smell, the bandages by texture, double checking with him that I had the right thing when I couldn't tell.
And I cleaned his hands.
The same hands that had left the bruises now sat still in his lap while I tended them. I worked by touch, tracing each knuckle, each cut, each piece of damaged skin. He didn't move or make a sound the entire time.
"Does it hurt?" I asked.
"No."
Liar. But I didn't push.
I wrapped his knuckles. Taped the gauze. Let my fingers linger on his palm.
Then I leaned forward and pressed my forehead against his. Gently. Mindful of my bruises, of his exhaustion, of the thousand broken things between us.
His breath stuttered. His hand came up and cupped the back of my neck, not pulling, just resting there. Warm. Steady. An anchor in the storm.
"I don't forgive you yet," I whispered.
"I know."
"I might not forgive you for a long time."
"I know."
"But I understand why you did it. I hate that I understand, but I do. And I'm grateful you saved my life."
His forehead pressed harder against mine.
His thumb stroked the base of my skull. And his breathing finally—finally—broke.
Not a sob. Not like the one I'd heard in the warehouse, the last sound before the darkness took me.
This was something quieter. More devastating.
The sound of a man who'd been holding the weight of the world releasing one single, shaking breath.
I held his face in my hands. Traced his jaw, his cheekbones, his closed eyes. Mapped him the way I'd done the first night we met, when I'd reached up and touched a stranger's face in a dark alley and felt my whole world shift on its axis.
It was the same face. The same man.
Yet everything was different.
I dropped my hands and straightened, letting the distance settle between us again because right now, it was necessary.
"I need to sleep," I said.
"Okay."
"Will you stay in the room with me? Not in the bed. Just…in the room. Can you do that?"
"Yeah." His voice was rough. "I can do that."
He helped me back to the bed and I laid down. He sat in the chair where he'd been in when I'd woken up, watching over me even though he had to be exhausted.
I pulled the blanket up to my chin and carefully turned on my side, away from him, and stared into the darkness that was always there.
And in the silence, in the space between his breathing and mine, I held the truth I couldn't say.
I was the leak, Milo.
I was always the leak.
The words stayed locked inside me. Sealed tight. Held in the vault that even an hour of torture couldn't crack. I'd held this secret while he beat me. I'd held it while Viktor watched. I'd held it through the needle and the darkness and the three seconds where I was certain I was dead.
I could hold it a little longer.
I closed my eyes. It changed nothing. It never did.
But somewhere in the dark, in a cabin in the middle of South Dakota that smelled like pine and medicine and the man who loved me enough to break me, I let myself fall asleep to the sound of his breathing.
Ragged. Uneven. Wrecked.
Mine.