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She pressed her hands to the counter and inhaled slowly as if I were trying her patience. Considering the amount of times I’d already tried or asked to do something far beyond what I was allowed to, I had no doubt I was.
“A few weeks,” she answered.
“Scarlet—”
“Oh my God, Chase, just let me put these on you,” she pled on a frantic breath, grabbing the bags of ice and bandages, and rounding the island to where I stood. “You drive me crazy.”
I knew that.
The edge of my mouth tipped back up into a brief smirk as I held out my arms for her to strap the ice to me the way she liked to since I apparently did it wrong. “I can’t tattoo. I can’t drive. I feel trapped here with nothing to do and nowhere to go.”
“You’ve gone out to breakfast with the guys. We’re going to your parents’ house tonight,” she reminded me as her fingers moved over the bruising on my torso without ever touching me. “These are looking good.”
A grunt rumbled in my chest, but I just studied her as she deftly secured the ice and bound my ribs, then moved to my shoulder to do the same.
Her fingers grazing my skin. Her face so close to mine.
Seeming to hold her breath the way she did every time.
And fuck me because I was pretty sure I’d started doing the same at some point. But she wasright thereand making my heart race as if it didn’t belong to someone else. With those seductive eyes and full lips and that sharp, teasing attitude that kept drawing me back in no matter how hard I fought it.
It’d been like this since that first night of therapy with her. But over the last couple of days, it had only heightened.
Driving me crazy during the hours she did private and group training sessions in the garage. Consuming my thoughts during the small breaks I took from researching amnesia or when Brandon and Konrad stopped by. Edging in on dangerous fucking territory during the evenings when Scarlet did therapy with me.
And Ihatedthat I looked forward to that time with her. I hated that I couldn’t look away from her and that my heart kicked up every time she smiled. Because when we separated at night, I felt like I was dying under the guilt of what I was doing to Harper.
A girl who was apparentlynothingto me.
And it sucked to feel like I was betraying someone, only to remember she didn’t love me. To remember none of it had been real. To be reminded that I wasn’t going to be a father.
Every. Fucking. Day.
“Just give it time,” Scarlet finally said as she finished with my shoulder, her stare meeting mine and getting trapped there when she realized how close we were.
Barely a breath apart.
And those lips that had been a constant torment this week were so damn close. The smallest shift, and I’d—fuck.
She cleared her throat and stepped back when I forced myself to look away, her voice shaky when she said, “I should start getting ready. We need to leave in about an hour.”
“Right.”
I was drowning in that guilt. Hating myself all over again. But my gaze still pulled in her direction when she started away from me, heading toward her bedroom.
Catching me watching her when she turned to add, “I know you want to do more than you can. I know you don’t like having to rely on other people for things. But if you go too fast, too soon, it will hurt you more or damage the bones permanently.”
“I know.”
A soft smile touched the corner of her mouth, drawing my entire focus when she teased, “Then stop asking to do things you know you can’t like an impatient child.”
“No promises,” I muttered after she’d already left, leaving me staring after her while my heart wrenched from my chest because it knew she was the wrong girl...
Right?
* * *
“I know Konrad,” I said suddenly, grabbing Scarlet’s arm and pulling her to a stop outside my parents’ house an hour and a half later.
