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“Dammit!” I said after he rang off, wishing I’d told him the phone he’d called me on wasn’t mine.
I walked in the direction of the entrance to the emergency room. “Sorry, I had another call come in. Um, they might try to ring me back,” I said to the woman who’d brought me the mobile.
“It’s fine. It’s my personal. Hang onto it as long as you need. I’m on shift another seven hours.”
“You’re sure?”
When she waved her hand and nodded, I went back to where the doctors were with Smoke.
“How is he?” I asked when they came out of the room.
“Not as bad as it looks. He suffered some second-degree burning but minimally. We’ll keep our eye on him for a couple of hours, and then he can go home.”
Home? Second-degree burns? I pushed open the door and sat down in the chair where I’d been earlier. “Hey,” I said when he opened his eyes.
“Hey.”
“Feeling no pain, are you?” I said when he smiled.
“I don’t know why you kept saying no to this stuff.”
When he turned his hand over, I rested my palm on his.
“Smoke, I—”
“You’re mad at me.”
“Mad? It’s a bit more complicated than that.”
“It always has been between us. Siren, I—”
I interrupted him like he had me. “There will be plenty of time to talk later. Now you should rest.”
He closed his eyes for a few moments and then opened them again. “I’m afraid that when I wake up, you’ll be gone.”
“I’m not going anywhere, and if I do, it’ll only be for a few minutes.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.” When Smoke closed his eyes again, mine filled with tears. Given my memory was back, for the most part at least, I could say with some certainty that I’d never seen Smoke as vulnerable as he was just now.
I thought back to when it was me lying in a hospital bed and Smoke sitting by my side. Jaysus, I’d asked the man to hold me! I stifled a laugh at the memory of the look on his face. It made so much more sense now that I could recall what our relationship had been like before I was shot. And yet, Smoke had been kind to me. He’d taken care of me. He’d even brought me to his ranch in the States.
None of that changed the conversation I’d heard between him and Decker, but as I’d said to him, t
here’d be time for us to talk later. For now, I would care for him as he had for me.
I traced the lines of his palms with my index finger, remembering how good those hands felt on my body. I leaned down and placed a kiss where my finger had been. Yes, things between us were complicated. And like Mr. O’Brien had said, there was a fine line between love and hate. While I could remember exactly what hating Smoke felt like, I also knew how it felt to love him.
27
Smoke
“Mr. Torcher, time to wake up,” I heard a voice say.
“Go away,” I grumbled without opening my eyes. I was having the most amazing dream about Siren, and I did not want it to end.
“I need to go over your discharge instructions with you, Mr. Torcher.”
