She blinked, long and slow, and when her eyes lifted to mine, they were glittering with unshed tears. “I did. I buried them six months apart.”
I’d never had anyone to lose other than my mother and I hadn’t lost her; she let me go when she realized the kind of man I had decided to become. I couldn’t say I blamed her, and at the time, I was so drunk on power and privilege that there was no way I could feel the pain of being forgotten and abandoned. Here, looking into this woman’s wounded eyes, I could suddenly feel all the sharp and jagged points of that loss tearing apart my soul.
I gave my head a shake to clear it of the foggy memories and new regret. “Well, can I get you anything? It’s late and I’m exhausted. I haven’t slept since the sound of crunching metal and breaking glass woke me up. I want to make sure you’re good, then I’m going to crash.”
I put the cell in my back pocket and ran a hand over my hair. There was only one bed in the cabin and she currently had control of it. There was an old army cot outside by the woodpile. It was going to be covered in snow and ungodly uncomfortable, but it would have to do. I’d never been one to sacrifice my own comfort for the needs of someone else, but the new me couldn’t imagine asking the poor girl to share the bed and there was no way in hell I was asking her to give it up for the cot.
She lifted a nervous hand and moved some of her very curly hair off of her face. I liked her hair. It was a pretty, rich brown that had a life of its own. It was big, wild, and untamed. I’d liked the way it twisted around my fingers and coiled around my wrist when I was cleaning her up. It was also amazingly soft and silky. Women, where I came from, didn’t feel like that. Everything about them was hard, processed, shielded. Nothing was real. Everything about Echo was unvarnished and true.
“I do need something actually.” I lifted an eyebrow as she fidgeted nervously, fingers picking at the material of the quilt. “I really have to go to the bathroom and I don’t know if I can make it there under my own steam. The room sort of tilts sideways when I move too fast.”
It was something simple, something I should have asked her if she needed help with well before now, especially after she guzzled down all that water. I wanted to kick myself for not being better at this whole knight in shining armor thing. I’d spent too long as the dragon, scaring the villagers, and doing the evil king’s bidding. Rewiring my brain to work the way any normal man’s did was going to take much longer than a day or two, apparently.
“Sure, I’ll help you. Just let me know if anything hurts and don’t expect five star accommodations. The bathroom is even more barebones than the rest of the cabin.” I guess the feds figured anything was a step up from a prison cell, so all I got was the bare minimum.
She pushed the covers off of her long, pale legs and moved to swing them over the side of the bed. All she had on was one of my flannel shirts and a pair of my wool socks. All her clothes were torn, shredded, and covered in blood and mud from the accident. I knew she was naked underneath that thick material and the vision of her shapely, well-toned legs did nothing to help the sudden tightness behind my zipper. She had the prettiest, most milky white skin I had ever seen and right now there was far too much of it on display for my comfort. My fingers tingled with the realization that they were going to be touching it very soon.
She held up her good hand and curled her injured arm protectively across her chest. “Try not to jostle my left side. The shoulder feels better now that it’s back in the socket, but it still hurts like a mother when I move it even a little bit.”
She curled her fingers around the back of my neck when I lowered myself so I could slide an arm under her bent knees and one around her back. I tried to pick her up as gently and as carefully as possible, but the movement still made her jolt and whimper in pain. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her forehead against my throat. I’d never had anyone to take care of before, never had to stop and put anyone else before myself. I had to say, the way satisfaction filled me up and burned through my blood felt almost as heady and potent as the rush I got from my white-knuckled and bloody climb to power in the Point. Normally a naked woman inspired lust and longing; this one had protective and possessive instincts rising up that I’d never felt before.
Almost as if she could read my mind, she asked against my skin, “What did you do before you became an executive lumberjack? How exactly did you make the shithole you call home a bad and dangerous place?”
She needed the words to distract from the obvious pain she was in. I juggled my hold on her soft skin as I opened the squeaking door to the bathroom. Calling it that was a bit of an exaggeration. The thing looked more like what you would find in a campground out in the woods. There was a teeny-tiny shower stall with a rusted showerhead and old camo shower curtain. The showerhead was about two inches lower than where I needed it to be in order to stand up straight while I was in there, so I was getting used to a back ache if I wanted clean hair. The sink was metal and set in an off-balance cabinet that leaned dramatically to the left. I stopped resting my toothbrush on the edge of it after the third time I found it on the floor. The toilet was standard, and probably the only part of the setup that wouldn’t make her cringe.
It took some work to get her down and steady on her feet. She was still clutching my shoulders for balance when I answered her question as honestly as I could. “I was a handyman of sorts. I fixed things for the man in charge, no matter what it took, no matter the cost. If he had a problem, fixing that problem started and stopped with me.”
She lifted her eyes to mine, white lines of agony stark around the corners. “You were a lackey?” I snorted out a startled laugh and grasped her arm as she worked out how to lower herself down onto the porcelain throne. Once she was situated, she waved me off. “I’ve got it from here, tough guy.”
I gave her a nod and slipped out the door, leaving it slightly cracked so that I could get to her quickly if she passed back out or needed anything.