"I made you something." He pulled a small glass jar from his lab coat pocket.
"What is it?"
"A salve. For your legs." He worked the lid off with his thumb. "It will help with the cramps and maybe smooth out some of the scarring."
She leaned over to smell it. "When did you have time to make this?"
It didn't smell good, but it didn't smell bad either.
"In the margins."
"You don't have margins. You have the lab and the Eight and the proposal for Losham and the escape plan."
"You come first, and I've been working on this for weeks."
Mattie kept her face neutral because if she didn't, she was going to do something embarrassing, like let her eyes tear up and her chin quiver. She hated showing weakness. She hadn't been broken by the house fire that had taken away her parents and had left her legs deformed, or the trafficking, or the attack and her crushed hand, but a boyfriend who had made a balm for her when it should have been the last thing on his mind might make her fall apart.
"Thank you." She took the jar from him and put it in her apron pocket. "I'm sure the balm will feel lovely on my legs, but I've been doing better lately. I don't cramp up as much because I'm barely walking. That's why I go up and down the stairs several times a day, even if I don't need to."
"None of us is moving enough," he said. "We stay inside all day, and I worry for Petrov's circulation, especially given his drinking. Mine is only good because I'm immortal now, and yours is good as well because you worked as a waitress before and were on your feet all day. But even you are losing muscle in your calves."
"Really?" She looked down at her legs. "I don't think they've grown smaller." It was hard to tell through the leggings she had on.
Petrov cleared his throat. "I hate to interrupt a consultation, Doctor Volkov, but Mattie is not your patient."
"She's my specialty."
"Your specialty is neurotransmitter chemistry."
"And everything that has to do with Mattie."
She laughed. "All right. Both of you. I'll try the salve tonight."
"Promise?"
"Yes. I promise to use the salve on my cramp-free legs."
"Good." Dimitri turned around. "I need to prepare the shots for Dave."
Petrov stayed next to her. "In Russia, we have a saying. When a young man brings a woman a gift, he is ready to propose."
Mattie rolled her eyes. "I think it only works when the gift is a ring. Salve doesn't count."
The thing about Petrov was that he might be irritating, but there was something to what he'd said.
Dimitri didn't have a ring to give her, but he wrapped her injured hand in plastic wrap before each shower so the bandages wouldn't get wet, and now he'd made something for her to ease her pain. Not to mention that he'd prepared syringes filled with neurotoxins so he could defend her from predatory immortals, and he had nearly died because they hadn't worked as well as he'd expected.
He'd proven to her in a thousand different ways how much he cared for her, and she wished she could do as much for him, but she wasn't as talented or as capable.
It was a little frustrating to have a genius boyfriend, who was now also an immortal and looked like an Adonis. She would never measure up.
Stop it.He loves you, and you love him, and that's all that matters.
She looked down at her hand. The splint went from the middle of her palm to past her knuckles, and the fingers inside it were still swollen and ugly, but they were healing.
The doctor had come yesterday to check on her hand and replace the bandages. Come to think of it, it was odd that the busy doctor was doing house visits, or rather lab visits, instead of telling her to come to the clinic.
Was it Dave's doing?
