He kneels down in front of me and examines my hip. There’s a small tear in the fabric, darkened with blood.
“I’m going to need to cut your pants down to the thigh so I can assess your cut.” My jaw drops, and he hands me a towel. “Drape that over your lap if you want.” His tone is steady and commanding, and he doesn’t wait for an answerbefore he takes a pair of scissors and cuts carefully down the seam of my favorite twill pants with competent efficiency.
“These were the most comfortable pants I owned,” I sigh.
He doesn’t seem to hear me. He’s detached almost. Like he isn’t Sawyer, and I’m not Brie. There are no snide remarks or strange heated looks. Then it dawns on me, what I learned about him on our sort-of double date. This is Sawyer the Navy SEAL in action.
I’ve never seen this side of him before.
After my pants are slit open on the side, he looks up at me with a look that allows no argument. I lift myself off enough for him to pull them down over my thighs, gentle and careful not to hurt me. My phone tumbles out of my back pocket. He looks at it for a second, dumbfounded. I grab it to shoot a quick text to both sisters, who’ve blown up my messages, that I’m safe and will keep in touch.
“Can you lean over more?” he asks.
I try, but my thighs are glued together. He removes my wet shoes and socks before helping me out of my pants the rest of the way. They were useless anyway, barely keeping my pride intact by a thread.
Once I’m leaning awkwardly on the bench, weight braced against the wall, he heaves out a sigh.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Sorry about this.”
Before I can ask what he’s sorry about, I feel a tug at my underwear, then hear a snip. My humiliation is complete when I feel the cool air on my bare ass cheek.
“There’s the problem,” he says
“What is?”
“A shard of glass. I’m going to pull it out.”
“Wait! Aren’t younotsupposed to do that? Like, couldn’t I bleed out?”
He moves to meet my eyes. His expression is patient, voice confident. “You aren’t going to bleed out. It didn’t hit a major artery unless it’s a much longer shard than I think. Given your?—”
“But what if you’re wrong?” I shriek.
Calmly, he puts his hand over mine. “Given your mobility, I’m sure it’s not that deep. If it were, you’d be in a lot more pain right now.” He presses his lips together then asks, “Do you trust me?”
Without hesitation, I blurt, “Yes.”
It surprises me. Under any other circumstance, I’d say I don’t trust Sawyer one iota. But the person with me right now isn’t Regular Sawyer. He’s Sawyer the SEAL.
He lets out a breath, like he’s just as surprised by my answer. “Squeeze my hand,” he says, reaching for tweezers with his free hand, and I do.
There’s an uncomfortable pinch before he holds a piece of glass up to me. He drops it into the open lid of his first aid kit and presses a piece of gauze to my hip. “Better?”
I shift and there’s a sting like with a regular cut, but the shooting pain is gone.
“Yeah.” I can’t keep the surprise from my voice. “All better.”
Sawyer cleans and dresses my wound while keeping up a one-sided conversation. It’s so impersonal, I’m sure it was part of his training, a method of distraction for the person he’s treating.
“Anything else hurt? You scrape your hands?”
I hold up my palms and wriggle my legs to show I didn’t twist anything when I fell. “All good.”
He sits back on his heels. I see the moment hetransforms from Sawyer the SEAL back to Regular Sawyer. His practiced detachment clears, and heat floods his eyes. But not the kind of heat I saw when he wore the bunny suit. He’s angry.
I’m suddenly freezing again. My sweater like ice on my skin beneath his jacket.
