Page 26 of Thunder

"Thunder?"

I try the knob. It's unlocked.

"It's me. You didn't come to supper, I'm just⁠—"

"In here."

His voice comes from the back of the cabin, rough, and under the roughness there's something I've never heard in it before.

"Presley. Don't—" A pause. "Hell. Back here."

I follow it down the hall past Raine's room with the horse posters to the big bathroom at the end, the one he built out when he redid the cabin, and I stop in the doorway.

He's in the tub.

The big jetted one, sunk into the tile, full of steaming water gone still because the jets have shut off on their timer.

He's sitting in it up to his waist with his forearms braced on the sides and his jaw tight.

His face gone gray at the edges with pain, and he looks up at me with an expression I’ve never once seen on this man.

He's embarrassed.

"Ran a hot bath for the hip," he says flatly. "Heat's supposed to help the muscle. Seemed real smart about an hour ago."

His jaw works. "Can't get up out of it. Leg won't take the push and there's nothing to grab that'll hold my weight. Been sitting here in cooling water like a damn beached whale waitin' on the water to give me back some give."

I should laugh.

Any other night I might.

But there's nothing funny about the gray in his face or the careful way he's holding himself so the hip doesn't spasm.

There's nothing funny about how much it’s killing this man to tell me he can’t get up.

"Okay." I'm already rolling my sleeves. "Okay, we'll get you up. Let me⁠—"

"You don't have to look at me like⁠—"

"I'm not looking at you like anything." I crouch at the side of the tub. "You want to get decent first, or you want out? Because I can step out and you can wrap a towel, or we can skip the part where you pretend I've got delicate sensibilities."

His mouth twitches, the first crack in the gray. "It's nothin' you haven't seen before, rattlesnake. My place, my tub. I don't have a modest bone left in my body and you know it better than most."

Rattlesnake.

He hasn't called me that to my face in a while.

It goes down my spine warm and I hate that it does. I cover it by reaching for his arm.

"Fine. Give me your arm. On three you push with the good leg and I pull, and we do it slowly."

He gives me his arm.

His hand closes around my forearm, and mine around his. His skin's hot and wet from the water and his grip is still strong even now, even wrecked, and I brace my boots on the tile and set my weight back.

"One. Two⁠—"

My boot slides on the wet tile.