I saw what was about to happen about two seconds before it actually did, but I could do nothing to stop it.
She went down face first.
The bottle of beer fell with a crash against the concrete, and she landed directly on top of it.
We were all up and out of our chairs, and I was lifting Raleigh to her feet, when we saw the blood.
“Shit,” Raleigh whined. “I was supposed to run tomorrow!”
“Raleigh,” her father said, sounding amused. “You don’t run.”
I bit my lip and reached for a beach towel that’d been resting along the back of the chair I’d taken up residence in and pressed it against her bleeding thigh—perilously close to other more pleasant things.
She blushed profusely when my big hand got close to other parts of her anatomy, but she didn’t complain or pull away.
“I was going to go run with Ezra,” she explained. “But this is going to need stitches.”
I pulled the towel away from her leg and nodded my head.
She was going to need stitches.
Shit.
“Not it,” Camryn, Croft, and Gates said at the same time.
Merida sighed. “Y’all suck.”
Raleigh scowled.
“What?” I asked her, likely sounding confused. “Does it hurt?”
She shrugged. “It doesn’t feel all that great, no. But that wasn’t what I was grimacing about.”
“Then what were you grimacing about?” I asked.
She gestured to the group at her back.
Merida was already heading inside.
She came back moments later with her purse slung over her shoulder and an impatient look on her face.
“I’ll take her,” I said, standing up. “Hold that there so you don’t lose half your body weight in blood.”
She was so freakin’ small that it wouldn’t take much for her to get to the point where she was woozy, that was for sure.
Merida beamed at me. “We normally take her to the doc in town. We’ll give him a call and tell him that you’re on the way.”
With that, they practically ushered us out of their house.
Moments later, when we were safely in the truck, I looked over at Raleigh, who didn’t look amused.
“Do they always do that?” I wondered as I started the truck up.
Raleigh shrugged. “I get hurt a lot. I go to the doctor at least twice a year for doing stupid things like I just did. It’s understandable that they don’t want to take me.”
I didn’t agree.
But that was just me.
If she was ever in need, it’d never get old taking care of her.
The more I got to know the woman by my side, the more I realized what a fool I’d been for not paying attention to her.
“Where to, darlin’?” I purred.
She narrowed her eyes on me. “You can just take me home. I’ll drive myself. This really isn’t a big deal, I promise.”
I ignored her promise and headed into town, grinning widely when she sighed deeply in the seat next to me.
When she didn’t look at me for the next ten minutes, I’d thought it was due to me not taking her home so she could drive herself.
Turns out, as we pulled into the parking lot of the one and only clinic in town, it was due to the fact that she was embarrassed that I’d witnessed yet another faux pas on her part.
“Listen.” She turned in the seat and looked at me. “I’m a mess. I have accidents happen every day. I’m scared of the dark. I trip over air. I break at least one bone a year, and honestly? I’m not really sure why you’re even still with me.”
My brow rose at her admission.
“And you’re deathly afraid of working with seniors,” I started, watching her eyes go wide.
The stillness of her body had her father and brother’s points hammered home. She was deathly afraid. She’d also been victimized, and the last nail was hammered home.
“H-how did you know that?” She licked her lips, drawing my attention to that succulent mouth of hers. That mouth I hadn’t tasted in well over three days, and it was driving me wild.
“Your brother let it slip that you didn’t work with the older age groups. I let it slip that you’d been taking over my sex-ed class.” I paused. “And it all degraded from there.”
She looked down at her hand, which was holding the bloody towel into place.
“I want to get better…and I’d also like to keep my job. I took it as a sign that this was my time,” she explained hesitantly.
I didn’t know what to say to that.
On one hand, I completely agreed with her. She needed to get over her fear. It wasn’t healthy.
But I also didn’t want her to ever be scared in the first place—no matter what the cause.
“They wouldn’t have fired you,” I promised. “I wouldn’t have let them.”
She laughed. “You didn’t even know me then, Ezra. I was still invisible.”
I winced. “I would’ve known that you were fired because you didn’t take over my class. I wouldn’t have stood for it.”