They were panting. Hard. As if the air was playing a game of chase with them.
She sat back on her heels while Hank leaned back against the trunk, his long legs sprawled out in front of him.
“You’re bleeding.” She ripped a piece of her skirt and frantically wrapped it around the gash in his arm. She kept glancing at him. He couldn’t catch his breath from exertion and trauma. He tried to speak, but she saw that the words were fighting at his throat and lips.
He glanced at his arm, stared at it as if it wasn’t his. He gasped as he tried to say something, but his teeth chattered.
She knew that reaction was from shock.
“The son of a bitch almost had me,” he finally rasped, then took a couple more breaths. He looked at her and shook his head slightly. “Damn, Smitty, but you can run. Can shoot, too.”
“What were you doing out there? Getting a silly trunk?” She tied off the strip of fabric and leaned against him for a moment. She was still breathing hard herself.
She pressed her cheek to his wet shoulder for herself. She needed that one small bit of comfort. He was alive. She closed her eyes and the words just came. “We almost lost you. God, Hank... almost.”
“Needed the trunk,” he muttered into her hair, and one hand came up to rest on her shoulder.
She looked at him. “Why?”
“For you.”
“Me?”
He moved his hand from her shoulder and patted the top of the trunk. “Merry Christmas, sweetheart.” And he passed out.
* * *
“Didyou really have a fightwith a shark?” Theodore hovered over Hank and stuck his curious little head right in Hank’s face.
He glanced up at the kid, whose nose was almost pressed to the small but deep wound in his arm.
“Move your head, dear, I can’t see what I’m doing.” Smitty waited before she took another stitch.
Hank clenched his jaw tight, but he didn’t say anything or make a sound. He just let her finish stitching the small gashes in his upper arm.
“There. All done.”
Hank exhaled hard, then took a couple of deep breaths. Theodore cocked his head and stared thoughtfully at his arm. “It looks funny.”
Hank frowned down at it. “It does?”
He nodded. “None of your guts are hanging out anymore.”
Hank laughed. “Is that good or bad?”
The kid shrugged. “Good, I guess.” Then he went back over to the Christmas tree with his sisters and he sat down, no longer fascinated with the stitched gashes from a shark’s jagged teeth. It was back to the Christmas gifts.
Margaret and Hank exchanged a look.
“Bloodthirsty little thing, isn’t he?” She laughed then. “Full of tact, too. Reminds me of someone else.”
“I have tact. Hell, Smitty, I have enough tact for a lifetime.”
“Can we open the gifts now?” Theodore asked in a voice that could only be described as a whine.
“Yes.” Margaret walked over and held a hand out to Hank.
He laughed. “I’m fine, sweetheart.” He pushed himself up.
