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At that single word, Hanna burst into tears. She buried her face in her hands, and it was all I could do not to reach out to touch her.
In fact, I quickly lost that battle and couldn’t stop myself from reaching my hand out to place it on top of her head. I closed my eyes at the feel of her soft hair beneath my fingertips.
But no sooner had I settled my hand there when I felt Hanna’s fingers on one hand curl around my wrist. She pulled my hand away from her head, forcing dread to move through me.
Oh, God. She was going to tell me that this didn’t change anything.
I was wrong.
Because the next thing I knew, Hanna lifted her other hand to the side of mine to hold it steady while she brought it to her lips. As tears streamed down her face, she kissed each and every one of my knuckles.
She was breaking my heart.
After she’d kissed every inch of my hand, she dropped her forehead to it and rasped, “I’m so sorry for what I said to you, Leo. You were the best decision I’ve ever made in my life, and I never regretted opening my heart to you.”
There was no way to quantify the immediate relief I felt. I wanted nothing more than to lift her in my arms, hold her close, and never let her go.
Since I couldn’t do that for a multitude of reasons, one being that I didn’t know the full extent of her injuries, I rolled to my left side and reached my other arm out to her. I placed it on top of her head and said, “Sweetness.”
That was the point at which Hanna broke down into full-fledged sobs. Her body jerked violently with the force of them, and I was quickly growing impatient. Not with her, but with the fact that I couldn’t just pull her into my arms to kiss her.
“Look at me, Hanna,” I urged gently.
She’d fluctuated between having her forehead pressed against the back of my hand and her cheek being held there. Shifting between those two positions, she would continue to kiss my hand, and the way in which she did it made me believe that she was trying to communicate just how sorry she was.
It seemed that even if she was sitting here in front of me, her mind was somewhere else.
I couldn’t take it.
My gut twisting at the amount of pain I could easily see she was in and unable to stand it, I rolled to my back, reached out to the table on the opposite side, and lifted my phone in my hand.
A moment later, Kane answered, “Everything okay?”
“No. Can you come here?”
I didn’t wait for a response. I dropped the phone back onto the table and turned toward Hanna again. She hadn’t even noticed that I’d made a phone call.
Kane was in the room less than ten seconds later, and I immediately ordered, “Put her in this bed with me.”
Kane didn’t hesitate. He moved toward Hanna, bent at the waist, and carefully lifted her into his arms. She refused to let go of me. As I shifted back on the bed, Kane settled Hanna in the bed beside me.
“Good?”
I nodded. “Thanks, man.”
Before he’d even made it out of the room, my focus was entirely on Hanna. She was still holding on to my left hand, her lips continuing to press kisses to my fingers and knuckles. I brought my right hand up and settled it at the back of her skull. Then, for the first time in more than a week, I kissed her.
It was only on the forehead, but it didn’t matter. I needed it.
“Sweetness,” I whispered, my lips still touching the skin on her forehead.
“I’m so sorry, Leo,” she cried.
“It’s okay.”
She tried to move her head back and forth. “No. No, it’s not. You deserve better than me.”
“I deserve you, Hanna. You’re the only one I want.”
