I drop my hand to my lap because there’s no reason to continue touching her.
She works slow and deliberate.
It’s absolute hell on my senses. Every touch keeps me balanced on a razor’s edge.
Her knuckles brush over my ribs as she lifts my shirt, making me jump.
I’m wound too fucking tight. Something is going to snap.
“Sorry,” she mumbles.
The house seems to shrink around us. She’s everywhere. I can’t avoid her and can’t ignore that her help doesn’t feel invasive as she checks me over me, her eyes flicking from the bruising along my side to the stitches above my brow. She checks them quickly before moving to the bandage at my shoulder.
I suck in a sharp breath when she peels it back, the air burning the raw nerves.
Aspen whispers another apology, working swiftly to make this as pain free as possible for both of us.
“It’s fine,” I mumble.
The look she gives me tells me she doesn’t believe it for a second. “You’re always fine, aren’t you?”
Ironic, coming from her. “We have that in common.”
The breath she huffs out is nearly a laugh. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Before I can say more, her phone vibrates on the table. Aspen leans over, smiling at whatever lights up the screen and taps out a reply. The responses fly in. I can’t read them, but her smirk tells me everything I need to know. These are her people.
“My friends.”
“I’m holding you up.”
“It’s fine. Someone’s always late.”
“You realize you proved my point?”
She sticks her tongue out before opening everything and pulling on a pair of gloves. And just like that, she eases the tension.
“I bet you’re a five-minutes-early-is-late kind of guy.”
She’s not wrong.
“I don’t like to be the reason people are waiting.”
There I go, sharing without thinking twice, again. If I’m not careful, her quiet persistence will get past every wall I’ve built. And once someone’s on the inside, they’re close enough to burn you.
“I’ll do my best to be gentle when I remove the old dress, but it’s going to hurt. After that, I have to apply the ointment and re-cover the area.”
Her gaze drops to the items in front of her, giving me a chance to really look at her.
The first time I saw her, in the helicopter, I was certain that I’d died and she was an angel. Later, with the shitty hospital lighting and exhaustion weighing her down, she was real but just as impossible to look away from. Now, she’s not just some pretty nurse; Aspen is breathtaking. More beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen before.
It’s pure luck that I get to see Aspen as she is now—real, unguarded, and stripped to who she is at her core.
Her dark hair is pulled back in a messy braid, and her baggy shirt hangs off her shoulder, giving me an eyeful of smooth, sun-kissed skin. Frayed denim peaks out where the raw cut of her shirt curls at the bottom. From toned legs to bare feet tipped in neon lavender nail polish, she’s perfection.
Barefoot, in her home, she’s something else, and it hits me harder than I want to admit.
It’s a chore to pull my gaze from her as her fingers smooth over my skin with the utmost care.
