My body’s instantly alert, aware.
Remembering how it felt to have her touching me.
Relax.
“Hey,” she says softly. “Are you hurting today? You’re so stiff.”
I’m in pain, all right.
But my thigh isn’t the appendage giving me the most trouble right now.
“I’m fine,” I say, gazing into those pretty green eyes looking down at me with clear worry, sweet and soft, while she warms the oil in her hands by rubbing them together. “Just spent a lot of time standing at work today.”
She tilts her head. “You had a lot of fires to put out today?”
I can’t help a small laugh. “I ain’t a full-time fire chief. We don’t have those salaries around here. I do welding work when I can, just to pick up the slack. I’m mostly set with my military pension and the skimpy pay from the town for fighting flames, but I can’t not work.”
“Sounds more like the type who can’t stand to be idle.”
She smirks and reaches for me—but I guess she remembers how I snarled at her the first time.
Instead of resting her hands on my chest like she’d started, she goes straight for my thigh.
I must be losing my mind, feeling sad to lose the feeling of those soft hands against my skin.
I did this to myself, being a defensive dick all the time.
Her brows knit as she smooths her hands over my thigh. I hiss as the muscle instantly jumps, locking as hard as a cramp, pain flaring.
“It’s bad right now,” she says softly, just resting her hands against the knot, trying to soak the pain into her warm, oil-smoothed palms, her gaze locked intently on my leg. “Worse than it was before. Blake…you’ve been stressing, haven’t you?”
“You could say that,” I grit out through my teeth.
Fuck, that hurts.
But I almost welcome the pain. It’s keeping my cock under control.
No way that thin towel’s gonna hide how I react to her.
Peace bites her lip, shaking her head. “You can’t keep doing this. What will Heart’s Edge do without its fire chief if you permanently disable yourself?”
I exhale, staring up at the ceiling. “It’s gonna happen anyway. The physical therapists told me I can’t stop it. Just delay the inevitable. Sooner or later, my leg’s gonna snarl up for good. Might be able to get around with a brace, might not.”
“I don’t believe it.” Slowly, she starts working again, using just the tips of her fingers now, prodding at the scar like she’s trying to soften a hard-packed knot of dough.
Her voice drops to a soothing, intimate murmur, and yeah, I can hear the music in it, now.
I hear how she might sing, even though she’s never let me listen yet.
“What makes you so sure?” I wonder.
“Injuries like this, they can be managed. You’ll never be a hundred percent cured, but you can always get yourself back to a workable state as long as you start taking care of yourself and don’t stop.” Her gaze flicks to me, and once again I’m struck by how she seems older than her years. “That’s what most people don’t get. They think it’s a short-term thing, and one day they can quit, but they never can.”
“Sounds like a prison sentence.” I smile faintly. “But I guess I’d deserve one since I’m guilty of giving up.”
“No. You don’t seem like the type to give up for good,” she says. “More like you just got tired and took a break.”
I snort, wishing I could have her faith in me.
I’m clueless what to say, so I don’t say anything.
Just let her do her thing.
I close my eyes while those soft hands take my pain and tease it out of me like she’s a snake charmer and she’s got every last bit of me coiled around her mystic fingertips.
Somewhere in the silence, it happens.
I slip away into memories.
Another time, another place, when I couldn’t do a single damn thing to stop the worst from happening.
Couldn’t stop the hurt that’d turn my little girl into the living fury she is now, the reason why all her pain is every bit as justified as my own.
* * *
Four Years Ago
I don’t know why we’re planning a family vacation.
No, not true, I do know why.
Dammit, I know, and the reason is upstairs packing her bags in a whirlwind, excited about getting to camp out in Glacier National Park for the next two weeks.
We’re trying for Andrea, not for us.
I’m not sure there’s even an “us” left, when Abby and I haven’t been seeing eye to eye for a good, long while.
It wasn’t just Ma, always sticking her nose in everything early on and trying to tell me how bad Abigail was for me.
It wasn’t just that my stubborn ass didn’t want Ma to be right, when catching her getting up close and personal with my fuck-shit traitor of a brother not so long ago all but proves Ma is right.