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She let out a puff of a laugh. “I don’t know. Hiding, I guess.”
“From me?” I asked, offended.
“Yes.”
Holding onto her elbow with my right hand, I tugged down a little harder while my left pushed the ball toward the socket. “Well, that’s rude. I charged across the city to save you.”
She winced, and through gritted teeth, she admitted, “I know you did. That’s why I was hiding.”
“Well, now I’m really offended.”
“I don’t know,” she went on, her voice strained. “I guess I was just… afraid.”
Her muscles were still tight, spasming around the dislocated joint and keeping it from sliding back into place. I applied a little extra pressure. “I thought we went over this,” I reminded her. “You don’t have to be afraid of me.”
“I’m not afraidofyou,” she growled, gritting her teeth harder.
“Relax,” I reminded her.
“It hurts,” she shot back. “How am I supposed to relax when it hurts?”
“Take a breath and let go,” I suggested. “A little pain is good. Especially if it means relief is coming.”
June let out a bitter laugh. “Oh man.”
“What?” I asked, quirking a brow.
“That’s you,” she said tightly. “What you just said—that’s you. You want me to let go and risk the pain.” She met my gaze reluctantly. “But I’m afraid of pain, Amos. Like,” she paused, swallowing. “Not physical pain. I’m afraid ofyoupain.”
I frowned, trying to understand her.
June blinked back tears. “I was hiding because I’m afraid of how I feel. I think I’m falling in love with you, and if you can’t ever love me back,” her voice broke, but she cleared her throat and finished with, “it will hurt.”
I paused my massaging motions, and her green eyes locked onto mine with baleful resignation. Like she’d just realized the full truth of her own words. This was not a helpful conversation for my concentration, but I had a feeling that I might have the magic words to help her. “June, I already love you,” I said softly.
She couldn’t have looked more shocked if I’d told her green apple licorice was a vegetable. I pulled down and gave an assertive push with my left hand.
Pop.
“Ow, mother trucker,” she hissed, leaning forward and clamping her hand to her arm.
I rotated her shoulder to make sure it was positioned well, and my lips pressed into a smile. Her substitute curse words were almost as cute as her sailor’s vocabulary. I felt around the joint, making sure everything was where it should be. “Better?”
June sighed, and still hunched over, she leaned forward until her head rested against my chest. I reached around her, so much smaller than I was and achingly vulnerable. I slid her off the bath and onto my lap so her good shoulder leaned against me, and I could tuck her head under my chin.
“I think I hit my head harder than I thought,” she mumbled.
“You didn’t,” I assured her. “I’m in love with you. I have been for a while.”
She picked up her head and speared me with a needle-sharp stare. “Brady, you better mean that.”
Smiling again, I cupped the soft angle of her jawline and tilted her lips up to mine. “I mean it, Matthews. I love you.”
She closed the distance between us, sealing her lips to mine and arching her back to mold her body to my torso. I savored her mouth, licking along the bottom edge of her lower lip and then greedily devouring every glide and press of our kiss as it deepened. Her body was like putty in my hands. June had a way of fitting herself to every gap and crevice in my body and being, until I was convinced I could never be whole again without her there.
But then a disturbingplopsounded through the bathroom, and I reluctantly pulled away from her to look down.Plop, plop, plop.Blood dripped from her leg to the Italian marble floors. Her pulse had raged to life from our kiss, and now it was causing the laceration on her shin to bleed freely.
June followed my gaze and then groaned. “No, Amos. Let’s just ignore it.”
