Suddenly she felt as if the water had run cold.
She pushed to her feet and gently touched his jaw. “I’m sorry.” She started to pull away, but he caught her hand and held it in place.
“For asking?”
“For touching a place that hurt.”
His stare intensified, his eyes clearer and older than they’d been a moment ago.
“It doesn’t hurt now. I worked through it.”
But she knew some pain changed shape instead of leaving, not unlike her own grief for her parents.
Water slid between them. She ran her thumb over his jaw and then leaned closer. “You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”
“I know.” He touched her cheek and began to talk. “I was tied there for long stretches. At first it was a rope, but after I broke through that, he used a chain. It cut into my leg. When it got infected, he just handcuffed me.”
She swallowed around a sudden ache in her throat and the image in her head of a man as strong as Archer being close to broken. “Did you think you’d get out?”
“Some days.”
“And others?”
“I thought about home.” His words were jagged with the truth of a man who’d survived by holding on to the memory of people who loved him. Same way she clung to her family waiting for her back in Chicago.
Only now…
She swallowed again. Only now she had someone here.
“Hey.”
She blinked quickly to dispel the tears trying to surface. “I’m fine.”
“You’re about to cry over my ankle.”
“I’m trying not to.”
A faint but real smile crossed his face. “Come here, love.”
She wrapped her arms around his waist and he folded her against him. They stood under the spray for a long time, neither speaking. She listened to his heartbeat under her ear.
The man was made of scars from brothers and bicycles and winters and war, all of it carried on skin that felt warm and alive under her hands.
He brushed wet hair from her face, his eyes glinting. “You still think I’m sexy?”
She laughed. “Sexier. Even after your tragic picnic-table accident.”
“Hey, that scar is legendary.”
“In your own mind.”
He laughed, and she kissed his open mouth, slow and deep, tasting coffee and the intoxicating flavor of the man she was getting far too attached to.
TWELVE
Steam still fogged the mirror when the knock hit the bathroom door, three sharp raps that made Archer sling a towel around his hips.
“Occupied.”
