“Sounds about right, all things considered.”
“Need to lie down for a while.” His head throbs and body aches, and he’s still so damn tired.
Disorientation has him gripping her hand harder as half-memories filter in one by one. He’s dependent on her in a way that makes him cringe. He’s not a whole person anymore, only a shadow of himself, and no amount of progress he’s made can erase that.
How could she ever see him as anything except damaged?
Kara leads him into the bedroom like a lover, guiding him by the hand to the bed. She’ll leave him alone and retreat to her floor mattress to give him space, and that’s the last thing he wants now. He can’t risk separating yet, so he gives her the barest tug when she turns away, counting on her ability to read him.
When she slips in beside him under the covers, it’s both a relief and a highlight of what he’ll never truly have.
Wade had a lot of time in that cell to come to terms with his attraction to her. He spent so long denying it, always afraid to risk losing her by confessing his feelings. She is the only person to ever truly see him, all his faults and scars, everything he kept hidden from the rest of the world, and she never turned away. How could he put something as precious as their friendship on the line for the slim possibility that she felt the same?
Now, he has her in his bed, but not in the way he wants. He is only her patient. A project.
“We need to leave this place,” he says, after Luke’s warning about Silas hits him like a punch to the face.
“I was thinking the same thing, but I don’t know where to go.”
“You said you had a camp in the woods?”
“It’s not any safer there. Out in the open and hard to protect.”
He mumbles a curse, trying to focus on anything except the fact that they’re still holding hands. Her palm is warm and her thumb strokes his knuckles to soothe his racing pulse.
His head finds the pillow in a frustrated flop, prompting a wince when his body shifts and a leftover ache flares in his crotch from the hit he took. His free hand instinctively reaches for himself before aborting the mission.
“I’m so sorry,” she begins. “I never thought he’d do that. I didn’t think he’d come back after I wrecked the car. Should have known it wasn’t over. How bad is it?”
“You mean how bad do my balls hurt?” he deadpans, so embarrassed already that the only option is to embrace it head-on.
“Yeah, that’s what I mean.”
“Still on fire. I’ll be alright, though. Ain’t Luke I’m worried about, anyway. He was right—”
“He wasn’t. Stop saying that,” she scowls, instantly irritated, though she makes no move to separate them. “I know what I want, Wade. I’ve also known what I don’t want for years. He just can’t accept it.”
“He cares about you. I woulda been angry too if I thought someone was doing this to you.” He lifts her hand the smallest bit to expose her bruised wrist.
“The fact that he cares has nothing to do with me. Are you listening to what I’m saying?”
He nods.
“This is where I want to be. I don’t need him or anyone else, not even you, telling me they know what’s best.”
She takes the potential sting out of that by dragging his hand into her space to rest on her stomach. It’s an awkward angle, but he doesn’t object.
“This ain’t no kinda life,” he whispers. “Taking care of me all the time. It’s not on you to do this. You know that, right? It’s not your job to make sure I eat and wash up and don’t get caught in some dark corner. That’s on me. All this, it isn’t what I want for you.”
He tried telling her this before, but he was yelling and upset at the time. A softer approach may land better.
“What do you want for me, then?”
He doesn’t have to look her way to know her face is creased with emotion that he hates to have put there.
“I want you to be happy.” His thumb flutters across her fingers where their hands are still joined. “Not gonna find that here. But you could have a whole other life at Paradise Falls…with him. If you weren’t stuck in this house with me.”
He expects anger or sadness, but not her half-snorted laugh.
