Text (Take It Off #4)(24)
Author: Cambria Hebert

“I can see you.” She said it like she was in awe.

“Well, I ain’t much to look at.” I started to pull away, but she grabbed my arm and yanked me back down so I was leaning over her body.

“Stay.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” I wasn’t sure why I just said that, but it felt right.

Her eyes—a crystal-blue color—roamed over my face, taking in every feature, every scar I knew was there. I was probably unshaven, dirty, and looked like crap.

“You look…” she said, her voice trailing away as she looked me over again. I braced myself for some polite answer. But what she said surprised me. “Like a warrior.”

I lifted my eyebrow. “A warrior, huh?”

She nodded. “Strong. Capable. Rough.”

I grunted, not sure what to make of her words.

“I won’t tell your secret,” she said, a small smile playing on her lips.

“And what secret is that?” I asked, amused.

“That even though you look like a warrior and act like a warrior, underneath all that toughness is really a big mushy marshmallow.”

I snorted. “There is nothing on me that resembles a marshmallow.” I flexed my bicep for her to feast her eyes on.

She placed her palm over the center of my chest, right above my heart. All sense of joking totally left my body. I swallowed.

“It’s why you need all those muscles, isn’t it? To protect what’s in here.”

And those were the words that wrapped me right around her little finger.

19

Honor

I never thought I might actually enjoy being a patient at a hospital. Of course, when your options are that or death… being in a hospital scores a ten out of ten.

I didn’t even mind the ugly gown they put me in because it meant finally getting out of my muddy, wet clothes. The IV hurt like hell, but whatever meds they put in it sure were nice. Finally, I could draw a breath without feeling like someone was stabbing me with a butcher knife.

The silence of the room was welcome. I liked silence. I knew some people who kept themselves so busy—their lives so full of all this… crap—that they never had a spare moment. I always felt bad for those people. It was almost as if they couldn’t stand the thought of being at rest—of being alone with themselves.

Of course, even when I was alone and sitting in the silence of a room, I was never actually alone. The voices in my head—the characters that I put down on the page—they were always with me. It wasn’t something I went around telling other people because they would likely put me in a padded room, but other writers understood. It was probably the reason I liked the silence so much, because then there was no exterior noise competing with the constant activity that went on within the confines of my brain.

Or maybe the silence was just welcome because it meant no one was throwing oranges at my head and trying to kill me.

I laid there as long as I could, ignoring reality, until I knew I couldn’t ignore it any longer. I had to talk to the police. They needed to get that man off the streets. He could be doing to someone else what he’d just done to me.

My eyes sprang open.

I expected to see the curtain draped around the bed, but it wasn’t there. In fact, I was no longer in the tiny cubicle that Nathan carried me into.

Nathan.

I turned my head, looking for him, but he wasn’t there. I was in a room by myself, one of those generic hospital rooms that looked the same as every other in the building. White walls, cold tile floor, a rolling bedside table nearby, and a set of windows on the far end.

The curtains were drawn so I couldn’t see outside, but judging from the amount of light in the room, I knew the sun was up. How long of a break from reality did I take?

I stared at the IV taped to the back of my hand and scowled. Stupid thing. As I pondered ripping it out, the door to the room opened and Nathan stepped inside.

He was still wearing the same white T-shirt and jeans he wore when he brought me in. They looked dry now but were wrinkled and covered in mud. It was the first time I really got a good look at him because it wasn’t dark, it wasn’t raining, and we weren’t running from a madman.

Oh, and I guess the meds in the IV were making it easier to focus on him and not the pain.

I decided not to rip it out after all.

He was a big guy, over six feet tall, with a broad frame and very defined body. His biceps were large and hard. I probably wouldn’t even be able to wrap my hand around them and let my fingers touch. His chest was also solid looking and the white shirt stretched across his pecs and lay smoothly over his flat stomach. Even his neck was thick, and I knew this was a man who spent a lot of time at the gym.

He saw I was awake and he strode to the end of the bed and stood, looking down at me. Usually, I hated people looming over me. It was creepy.

Nathan was not creepy.

His nearly black hair was super short, a typical military cut, I suppose. It graduated from being practically bald on the sides and faded upward to short strands on the top that were sticking up like he’d been running his hands over the top of his head.

He was also unshaven; dark, coarse hair covered the lower half of his face. I knew he most likely was always shaven, but his hair was so dark that the time he spent running around in the woods with me caused it to already shadow his jaw.

He had a strong nose with a little bump in the center (had it been broken?), dark thick eyebrows, and blue eyes. His skin wasn’t as pale as mine, and he had a scar underneath his right eye. It ran jaggedly across his cheekbone. His lips were full, but there was also another scar right beneath his bottom lip, and it interrupted the curved line that his lips would have formed.

A black tattoo peaked out from under the sleeve on his left arm, and I began to daydream about what the entire tattoo looked like and if he had any more in places that were covered by his clothes.

“You’re still here,” I said, still not taking away my eyes.

“I told you I wouldn’t leave.”

He did say that, but I guess part of me thought he was only saying what he thought I wanted to hear. After all, I wasn’t his responsibility. I mean, he barely knew me.

“How long was I out?”

He walked around the side of bed. I couldn’t help but notice the way his hips swiveled as he moved. He dropped into a chair sitting right beside the bed and reclined against the back. “A couple hours.”

“What time is it?”

“About ten a.m.”

I felt my eyes widen. I’d been out more than a couple hours. He’d been here this whole time? “Aren’t you exhausted?”