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I slid my hand up to her hip, just below the spot where she’d been injured. It might not have been my wisest idea, considering I hadn’t had my hands on her in more than a week, but I couldn’t resist.
“This is the one that’s hurting you.”
“No.”
“But you said that you weren’t feeling any pain in your leg,” I reminded her.
“Because I’m not,” she insisted. “They gave me some pain medications, so I’m not feeling any pain from my physical injuries. But my heart hurts, Leo. I said horrible things to you. I kicked you out of my place. You continued to work on the case, figured it out, and got yourself seriously injured. You could have died, and I was nearly killed before I was going to have the chance to tell you how much you mean to me. How can I not feel pain for all the hurt I’ve caused you?”
“Because you’re here now,” I told her without hesitation. “Because you realized your mistake, and you apologized. There’s nothing else for you to do, sweetness. You’ve got to forgive yourself, because I already have.”
“How could you ever possibly trust me again?”
Offering a gentle squeeze on her hip, I said, “I just do, because I love you. We’ll get through this, Hanna. I know there’s a lot for us to discuss. I know we need to work through all that has happened, but as long as we’re both on board and want this to work, we’ll figure all the rest of it out.”
“Do you really believe that?” she asked.
“Absolutely.”
And that was the truth.
While I didn’t know all of the details yet, and I was certain she was fuzzy on things that happened on my end, there was no question that we’d both endured something horrific. Something about going through that helped to put things into perspective. So, I was confident that no matter what happened, no matter what came our way, Hanna and I would easily be able to weather any storm.
EPILOGUE
Hanna
If it hadn’t been for the obvious physical recovery we were both going through, I wouldn’t have known anything bad had happened. It had been a couple of weeks since Leo and I had both wound up in life-threatening situations.
For us to be where we were now, even if the physical recovery wasn’t going as fast as we both would have liked, was all that I could have wanted. I had a feeling Leo was in the same boat; though, he had been slightly irritated with his need to return to his workouts slowly and not at the same intensity as they had been.
While the doctors had assured him that he’d eventually be able to return to his workouts he’d been doing prior to the coma, they wanted him to ease back into things. On the bright side, he was at least following the doctor’s orders, even if he grumbled about it the whole time.
As for me, the stitches in both my leg and my side had been removed. I still had some issues with my leg, but it had improved tremendously over the last few weeks.
So, there were some minor physical setbacks that both Leo and I were experiencing.
From a psychological standpoint, it seemed he was doing okay. I was a different story. Because I was still carrying around a lot of guilt. While Leo had found a way to help me get over the guilt that I felt about what happened to him—or, most of it, anyway—I’d still had to accept that three people were dead because of what Whitney had done. I had to live with the fact that Darryl had come to my rescue, and he had wound up being seriously injured.
There was also the whole fact that I’d been nearly killed. Something about that hadn’t been easy to come to grips with. Obviously, I was grateful to Leo for not giving up on me or this case after I’d learned the truth about what he was doing. I was also appreciative of the people he’d had in his life—particularly Kane and Magnus—who’d been there that day to save me from certain doom.
It hadn’t been easy, but it was getting better with each day that passed.
As for Whitney, she was in a boatload of trouble. It was still early, so she hadn’t gone to trial yet, but things weren’t looking good for her at all. Three murders. Two attempted murders. One assault. My guess was that she’d be facing a lot of years in jail.
Knowing that things were in a good place, that the case had been solved, and that we weren’t more seriously injured, Leo and I really had the opportunity to take care of each other.
And that was precisely what we did.
The best thing about it was that neither one of us had slacked. It was just as Leo had told me that day in the hospital.
As long as we were both on board with doing what needed to be done for our relationship, we were going to be fine.
So, that’s what we did.
We were both on board before we even left the hospital. And we’d been working to fix what happened between us ever since.
Now, it was as though nothing had happened.
