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I brought myself to the bathroom, turning on the water, then stripping out of my clothes.
And I realized.
The pain was gone.
Aside from an ache in my ribs when I turned too fast or too far and the twinge if my tongue probed the empty hole where a molar used to exist. But my lip had sealed and scabbed and the scab had rubbed off in my sleep. The bruises had faded, the cuts mostly closed over. My knuckles were still tight with the healing scabs, but didn't hurt, just felt weird, restricted.
Everything was on the mend or mended.
And after a long, hot shower, all the remaining aches had been soothed away.
I was feeling back to normal.
And, somehow, that thought filled me with something I could only label as sadness.
Because it would all be over. The nursing. The sweetness. The hushed talks in the middle of the night. The cuddling. The soothing petting.
I wasn't hurt anymore.
He didn't need to take care of me.
On that depressing realization, I carefully dressed in black leggings and a plain dark gray tee, brushed and dried my hair, then - with no other grooming that needed my attention - I made my way out into the living space, finding the blankets all folded on the couch, the pillows arranged neatly.
No empty, discarded soda or iced tea bottles were laying around, no dishes loading up the sink, no garbage overflowing the pail.
Everything was neat.
Clean.
And there was a pile of eggs and toast on a plate for me. With orange juice. And coffee.
"You look better," he observed after soaking the frying pan in the sink to be dealt with later. And not the way that me or Astrid would do, leaving something in the sink to 'soak for a bit' and then not dealing with it until it was three days later. No, he would actually wash it after we ate breakfast.
"I feel better," I admitted. "Aside from a little twinge in my side, I feel almost back to normal."
"Cam will be glad when he gets back. I think he was really starting to worry about you."
"I never take to the bed. No matter how hurt I am, I am usually up and going the next day. There is always something that needs to be taken care of. Except this time," I said, giving him a wobbly smile that felt lame, felt like it didn't convey nearly enough of the feeling inside. "Thank you for that."
"It's my fault you got hurt," he insisted.
"What? No, it wasn't. We didn't research that enough. That was on me more than anyone else."
"I meant because you needed the gun."
"Again, because I stole it from you to begin with," I reminded him, rolling my eyes. "This is all my fault from start to finish."
"Hey," he said, voice a little firmer than I was used to it being, making my gaze move up from my plate. "Don't give a fuck what the situation was, that getting done to you, that was not your fucking fault."
My belly fluttered hard at that even as my head shook a bit. "This job comes with risks. I knew that going into it. This, getting worked over, this is part of the territory unfortunately."
"I don't like that," he admitted, his gaze focused on his plate even though he hadn't even attempted to eat anything yet.
"I don't think you're supposed to. No one likes the idea of someone getting their ass kicked."
"You're not just someone, Livvy," he told me, voice low, and the fluttering was amplified this time. "I don't know how Cam does it," he added after the silence stretched long enough to become awkward since I couldn't think of a single thing to say. At least not anything that wouldn't give it all away. What I was feeling. Toward him. About him. Knowing that was not somewhere either of us needed things to go right then.
"Does what?"
"Handles the threat of something happening to you - or Astrid - all the time. He's a stronger man than I am."
"I think it helps that this is all we have known while we have been together. The fun nights just hanging out here at the loft are great, but there aren't as many of those as there are nights out on the road, worried, going into dangerous situations, never knowing if we would make it out of them, and then sometimes when things went south, having to limp back to the car together, holding compresses to bleeding wounds, trying to do battlefield emergency care. We've been in the trenches more than we have been out of them. So while I think he does still worry, that this does still eat at him in many ways, it is something we are used to."
"I don't think it would be possible for me to get used to seeing your head get kicked in like that. Or hearing you cry out in your sleep if you moved onto a sore spot. Or fighting back tears when I cleaned your wounds. There are some things you should never have to get used to."
