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For the next several minutes, we didn’t speak. She started to settle, her body no longer involuntarily moving because she’d been crying so hard. She’d taken several deep breaths, and I was fully aware that she was coming back to me.
For the first time since she’d broken down, Hanna finally pulled her head back and tipped her chin to look at me. I brought my thumb to her cheek and wiped away her tears while offering her a reassuring smile.
“I love you, Leo.”
My thumb stopped moving, and I pressed my fingertips in. “What?”
She swallowed hard, a look of determination moving through her red-rimmed and puffy eyes. “I love you. The minute I said what I did to you, I regretted it. Because it was a lie. You are the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and I’m so sorry for how I treated you.”
“You love me?”
She nodded her head slowly against the pillow. “I think it happened when you came over to watch a movie with me.”
“It was when you offered to help me exercise after I took you for doughnuts the next morning that it happened for me,” I revealed.
Hanna’s gorgeous lips parted. “What?”
“I love you, too,” I told her.
Tears welled in her eyes. “I thought you were going to die, and I was never going to have the chance to tell you how sorry I was and how much you mean to me.”
I began swiping at her cheek again. “I didn’t die. I’m right here.”
A smile played at her lips as she nodded. “Yeah.”
After pressing another kiss to her forehead, I couldn’t stop myself. I helped her to angle her head back. Then I touched my lips to hers. Nothing had felt better. Of course, that was only until she started to cry again.
I couldn’t stop myself from letting out a laugh. “Hanna, you’re breaking my heart.”
“I’m sorry. I want you to know how sorry I am.”
“I do,” I assured her. “I promise. It’s okay. You’re here. I’m here. Just let it go. I have.”
After a few beats of silence, she gave me another nod and promised, “I’ll try.”
Wanting to kiss her again, but not wanting her to break down into tears, I decided I’d need to wait. So, I asked, “Where were you hurt?”
“My leg, and my side.”
She’d been stabbed. In her leg and her side.
“Show me,” I urged.
Keeping a firm hold on my hand with one of hers, she let go with the other and placed it on the hospital gown covering her legs. Slowly, she lifted the gown until she exposed gauze wrapped around the middle of her thigh. “They stitched me up when they brought me in. Eight of them.”
I brought my hand to her thigh and asked, “Are you in any pain?”
“Not there.”
“Show me the other one.”
A flush hit her cheeks.
Since she’d said she’d been hurt on her side, I had a feeling she was thinking about the fact that she was going to need to expose more of her body to me. Wanting to ease any concerns she might have had, I gently stroked my thumb across her thigh and promised, “I didn’t receive any orders from the doctor not to get too excited, so it’s all good. You can show me.”
Her lips twitched, clearly understanding my reference, before she hiked the gown a bit higher. As she exposed more and more of her skin, the only thing I wanted to do was kiss all of it. She made it to her hip, revealed her panties, and continued to lift the gown until she reached the bandage.
A patch of gauze covered the skin at her side, and Hanna shared, “This one took ten stitches.”
