Chapter 33 #2
I pick some strands of hay out of her hair with one hand, while the other stays wrapped around the back of her neck, and listen to her breathe. Ragged, then steadier, then steadier still. My own breath moves to match hers without being asked, while her pulse is steady under my palm.
Fast and alive.
And everything I could ask for.
I lose track of how long we stay wrapped up in one another, only coming around when Rhett’s low timbre calls from below.
“Sheriff’s askin’ for you, Boss.”
Pulling back to see Daisy’s face, I nod reassuringly. “You ready?”
Her lips tremble ever so slightly before she nods back. Slowly, I turn and drop to a crouch. “Up, baby.”
She moves soundlessly, locking her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist before pressing her face against the middle of my back, right between my shoulder blades.
I take the ladder one rung at a time, and once I’m down, I turn her around and into my chest, her arms immediately looping around my neck once more.
Deputy Torres is at the open barn doors with his hat in his hands, and just beyond him, I see two cruisers in the yard with the light bars flashing. Marcus Donnelly is in the back of the second cruiser with his head lowered.
“Wyatt.” Torres greets me with a somber nod that I return before his eyes move to Daisy. “Miss Monroe.”
She lifts her head off my collarbone just enough to answer. “Deputy Torres.”
He watches her closely, then flicks his eyes to mine. “Cutter still in the loft?”
“Out cold.”
Rhett steps forward. “I can show one of your deputies.”
Torres nods at one of his men, who then follows Rhett inside the barn.
I clench my jaw before asking, “How’s Dave doin’?”
“Stable.” Daisy goes stock still in my arms. “Medics got to him in time. Colt’s gone along in the ambulance to Sage Harbor Memorial.”
Daisy lifts her head then. “I recorded him.”
Torres frowns as we both look at the woman in my arms. She props herself a fraction higher.
“I recorded Marcus. In a voice memo on my phone. I started it before Stan came in. I got every word of his confession.” Her eyes glisten at that, her voice dropping to a whisper. “I got the proof. I got it.”
“Do you have the phone now?” Torres’ eyes cut to me, then back to her.
She pulls it out from between us and hands it over without a word.
“I’ll need it for evidence, Miss Monroe. Might be weeks before you get it back.”
“Take it.” She lifts her gaze to mine, determination filling her petite features, and I lean closer to press a kiss to her brow.
Looking between us as he tucks the phone away, Torres presses his lips together. His eyes land on Daisy’s torn-up feet, and his features soften. “I’ll need full statements from you both tomorrow. Morning or afternoon, it’s your call.”
“See you then, Deputy.”
He steps aside with a sharp nod, moving off toward the barn. I carry Daisy past the cruisers, toward the house where June’s waiting.
She tuts as we reach her. “My damn kitchen’s a crime scene, but Torres said we can use the rest of the house.”
Against my throat, Daisy lets out the smallest exhale. June clocks it the second I do, and her hand comes up to gently brush a strand of hay out of Daisy’s hair.
“I’ll bring food and fresh clothes in a bit. And the first aid kit.” June’s eyes stay on Daisy. “I rang West already, he’s still an hour out from Bozeman. Maggie’s just finishing up that foal in Sage Harbor, but she’ll come home the minute she’s done.”
“Thank you, June.” Daisy’s voice is small.
June’s eyes come up to mine. “I’m right down the hall, you two need anythin’.”
“Appreciate it.”
I shift Daisy higher against my chest and carry her past June into the house. The kitchen’s behind a strip of yellow tape and a deputy with a camera, but I don’t look, and neither does Daisy.
I’ve climbed these stairs every day of my life, but today, they feel longer than ever before. By the time I make the landing, Daisy’s hand has worked its way back into the front of my shirt.
Once we reach my room at the end of the hall, I shoulder the door open, kick it shut behind me, and cross to the bed.
I sit her down on the edge of it sideways so her feet aren’t touching the floor, and crouch down between her knees. I need a solid minute just to look at her.
To take in the fact that she’s here, and safe, and whole.
She brings one hand up and her thumb settles right under my left cheekbone, where Stan’s swing caught me on the way up the ladder. The skin there is hot and tight, though I’d stopped noticing in the aftermath.
Her brows pull in. “You’re cut.”
“Little bit.”
“Wyatt.”
“It’s nothin’, baby.”
She shakes her head once, her thumb careful along the edge of the cut.
“Bath. Both of us.”
There is so much I want to say to her, and not one piece of it I can say yet. So I cover her hand with mine, turn my face into her palm, and press my mouth there.
“Yeah, Daisy-girl. A bath sounds real good.”
I cross to the window and pull the heavy curtain, blocking out the late afternoon sun. When I turn back, she’s watching me. I hold my hand out, and she takes it.
The bathroom has wooden floors and stone counters, with a big clawfoot tub against the back wall under a row of white tiles. The window over the tub faces south, giving views of the valley out toward the foothills in the afternoon light.
I sit her on the closed toilet lid and run the tap, drop the stopper, and let the tub fill. Then I crouch in front of her again, my hands going to her hips.
“Arms up.”
She lifts them. I work her shirt up the length of her body and drop it on the floor. Her bra goes with it. She’s bare to the waist, and there’s not an ounce of hunger in the way I am looking at her. Just the gratitude of a man who almost did not get to look at her again.
She reaches for me then, tugging at the bottom of my shirt.
“Off.” She pulls it up the length of me, and when it clears my head, her breath stops short.
“Wyatt.”
I look down to find a bruise blooming across the bottom three ribs, dark in the middle and fanning out yellow at the edges. I don’t remember when he got me there.
She lays her palm flat over the dark of it, light enough that she isn’t pressing. I cover her hand with mine.
“I’m here. I’m fine.”
She nods slowly, but doesn’t move her hand for a long beat. Then she goes to the button on my jeans and the rest of my clothes come off where I stand.
I crouch back down to work her jeans off her, careful at the cuts on her feet, then take her by the elbow and the small of her back and walk her the three steps to the tub.
“I’m right behind you.”
I keep her steady while she steps in and lowers herself, and a long breath leaves her before I get in behind her. The water comes up around my chest as she slides back between my legs. Her back fits to my chest while her head finds my shoulder, and I press my mouth to her temple.
Neither of us move for a long time until she holds up her hand.
“Cloth.”
I hand it over her shoulder. She wets it and I take it back.
“You first.” She starts to protest, but I rest my mouth at the edge of her ear. “Please, baby. Let me have this.”
She tips her head back against my shoulder and gives me a small nod.
I’m thorough, gently washing her shoulders and both arms, taking extra care around the bruise on her bicep before moving to her collarbone. Then I work down her back, finding a graze across her ribs, probably from the bales, and she hisses through her teeth when I drag the cloth over it.
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
I do her hair next, taking my time to lather twice with my shampoo. The worst of the hay, dust, and grime gets dumped over the side of the tub, then I rinse her with the plastic cup from the side, using slow pours, my free hand cupped at her hairline.
When her hair is done, I ease her forward. “Turn to face me.” She does, slowly, and the water sloshes against the rim. She comes around onto her knees between mine, the water at her waist, steam rising around both of us.
Her feet I do last as she settles her back against the other end of the tub. I lift her left foot up out of the water and lay it gently against my thigh under the surface so I can see what I’m working with.
The cuts are worst along her heel and the inside of her ankle. I work around them, not over, as gentle as I’ve ever been with anything in my life, and when I’m done, I press my mouth to the inside of her ankle. Just once. Then I lower her foot back into the water.
“Okay, baby. Your turn.”
She is already facing me. Her hair is wet and combed back off her face, her eyes very awake.
“Give it here.”
She takes the cut on my cheekbone first, her thumb on my jaw to steady her hand, the cloth slow over the cut.
“You’re going to have a black eye.”
“Probably.”
She works the dried blood off carefully, moving from my temple to my mouth, where there’s a split at the corner of my lip I hadn’t registered. She moves down my jaw, my throat, my collarbones, my chest, palm flat over the cloth, more pressure than she used on her own face. Making sure of me.
When she gets to my left side, she stops to rinse the cloth. Then she brings it out warm and folded, laying it flat against the bruise across my ribs before covering it with her other hand and just holding it there, letting the heat sit on the bruise.
When she lifts the cloth away, she takes my left hand out of the water and turns it palm up in both of hers and starts in on the knuckles. She has to soak the worst of the blood off.
The third knuckle is the worst, and she does that one slowest of all, her thumb running along the back of my hand the whole time.
When the left is clean, she takes the right and does the same. She’s on the second to last knuckle when I lift her chin with my finger.
“Look at me, baby.”
Her eyes come up to mine, wet at the edges and not blinking.
“I’d do it a hundred more times.”
She doesn’t move. Doesn’t even breathe.
“For you. Without thinkin’. Without flinchin’.” My thumb traces her bottom lip. “Anyone comes for you, Daisy-girl, they go through me first. Every damn time.”