“I called him.” Lathan pressed her hand tighter to his cheek. His stubble licked against her skin, eliciting a very specific memory from their afternoon of sex. The memory of him rubbing his cheek against her inner thigh right before he’d tasted her. “You vomited in your sleep. Your thumb was dislocated. You wouldn’t wake up. It’s been over an hour.” Worry rode each syllable he spoke.
His words seeped through her skin, struggled to get through the thick bone of her skull, then finally permeated deep enough to make sense. She looked down. She’d fallen asleep naked—in Lathan’s arms—but now she was wearing one of his thick sweatshirts. And the sheets were not the same ones she’d slept on the past few days. “My dream… It was…bad, really bad, and then I heard you.” She flexed her fingers against his cheek. “I heard you tell me to wake up, and the White Place disappeared and—”
“We’ll talk about your dream in a moment.” Impatience sped Dr. Stone’s speech. “Any dizziness? Disorientation? Brain fog?”
“No. I feel fine.” If she were being totally honest, she would’ve said she felt better than fine. She felt good. Energized. Like she was ready to run a 5K forward and backward.
“Doesn’t your thumb hurt?” Dr. Stone asked.
“Not at all. Is that weird? I’ve never dislocated a bone before.”
Dr. Stone’s gaze locked on her hand pressed to Lathan’s cheek. She could see him analyzing and formulating an opinion about them. Yeah, it probably looked odd. So what? Lathan didn’t mind and neither did she. It was sweet the way he held her hand so tightly to him like he didn’t ever want to let her go. Like she was precious.
“I set your thumb, but you’ll need X-rays to be sure there aren’t any chips or bone fragments. Come by the house tomorrow, and I’ll do that for you.”
“How much will I owe you?”
A calculating gleam narrowed his eyes. “A small favor is all.”
Warning. Warning. Warning. Lights, sirens, alarms all shrieked through her brain. “What kind of favor?”
“I’d simply like for you to take your hand off Mr. Montgomery’s cheek.”
“That’s it?” If that’s the only thing he wanted, she was getting a super door-buster deal. She tried to tug her hand away from Lathan, but he held on to her. His eyes seemed to speak the word his mouth never uttered. Don’t. But then he released her.
A chill sank into her chest, settled into her heart, pumped out into her extremities. She began shaking, her teeth clacked, and her hand pulsated sharp stabs of frigid pain. She hunched in on herself, cradling her injury to her chest.
“You’re hurting now, aren’t you?” Dr. Stone stated.
Lathan grabbed her hand and slapped it against his cheek.
Heat spread through her, melting away the frigid agony. Dear Mother of Mercy, what was going on?
“Pain is gone, isn’t it?” A satisfied-with-himself smile quirked the corners of Dr. Stone’s mouth. “I knew it.”
“Why? How? What’s going on?”
Lathan answered, “I don’t know what’s happening, but I know you feel better when you’re touching me.”
“You feel it too?” Dr. Stone spoke to Lathan, but Lathan’s attention was on her.
“It’s a cool, fluid connection, almost like a magnet drawing us together.” Lathan never took his gaze off her.
“It feels warm to me.”
“You feel connected because you are. Mr. Montgomery, you are her protector. And she is yours. You possess the power to heal each other.”
To heal each other? The words echoed in Evanee’s mind. Was that why Lathan could hear when they were intimately connected? “Can you hear right now?”
“Only when your hand is on my cheek.” He turned to Dr. Stone. “Why? Why can I hear when her hand is on my cheek, but when she takes it off, I can’t?”
“What is the nature of your hearing problem?”
“When I was thirteen, I was attacked. My eardrums were punctured.” He spoke the words matter-of-factly.
She gasped. She couldn’t help it. She couldn’t imagine Lathan ever being a victim. And yet in some ways he still was. He still reacted with fear whenever someone touched him from behind.
“The doctors repaired as much of the damage as possible, so I do hear some sounds.”
“I would speculate that your ears are healed. They just never healed properly, and something about touching her hand to your tattoo bridges the healing gap. It’s no coincidence that the tattoo on your cheek is a Native American symbol for healing.”
She’d forgotten about that. “I don’t understand what’s happening.” She sounded like a whiny brat.
Lathan moved from kneeling next to the bed to sitting with her. It was awkward trying to keep her hand pressed to his face at the same time he moved. They probably looked like they were playing some odd form of Twister, but she didn’t want to let go of him any more than he wanted to let go of her.
“You know the bear, right?” Dr. Stone asked.
“The bear?” She and Lathan spoke at the same time.
“The carved bear at the top of the hill. Near my place.”
Just this morning she’d noticed how lifelike the totem appeared, had half expected the bear to turn its head and follow their progress toward Dr. Stone’s driveway. “I’m not following what the bear has to do with anything.”
“Damn…” Lathan spoke the word as if he’d gained some long-lost recognition.
“Not many people know the story behind the bear. But I do. And you both need to hear it. It will explain so much about you both.” Dr. Stone pulled a small leather book from his pocket—the binding worn and frayed from many readings. With care, he opened the book, stared at the page for a moment, then began speaking.
“A man, different than all others, used to roam this land. A man who was more than man. He carried a bit of spirit inside him. But even that bit of spirit was too great to contain within. Some of it showed on his skin…” Dr. Stone’s voice spread, completely immersing her in another time.