He switched on the lamp, flicked out his pocketknife and slid it under the hem of her jeans. She’d rather avoid light but she’d also prefer he didn’t do this blind.
“What about your brother?” she asked.
He stilled. “How do you know about my brother?”
Shit. “You mentioned him.”
“Pretty sure I didn’t.” A definite bitter note. He stabbed the fabric from underneath and sawed. “Did you Google me?”
Honesty is the best policy, as her mother used to say before she got convicted. “Had to check I wasn’t delivering a novice kayaker to his...”
“...death?”
“So...your brother?”
The pressure around her leg released as he cut. “What about him?”
“He’s into suicidal kayaking, too, right?”
Cody pocketed the knife and began to unpeel the denim, stopping where he met resistance. She held her breath.
“Was,” he said.
“He gave it up? Smart guy.”
“He died. Kayaking.”
Oh my God.“I’m sorry. That was...”
“Don’t worry.”
“No, seriously, I am sorry.” She’d intended to tease him, not upset him. “How long ago?”
“Seven years.”
“That’s why you joined the legion?”
He grabbed nail scissors from the kit and started snipping around the wounds. “I enlisted a year later.”
That tightness in his tone—he wasn’t just grieving, he was angry. There was something unresolved, something he wasn’t going to volunteer.
“Were you with him when he died?”
Snip.“Yep.”
Yikes. “So is it him you blame, or yourself?”
He jerked his head up, his brow stern, the light drilling into her. “What?”
She shut her eyes and pressed the heels of her palms to them. “You’re pissed off about it.”
She sensed a return to darkness. When she opened her eyes, the night was twice as black, apart from a cone of light around him and her leg.
“Shouldn’t have happened,” he said, drawing her lower leg across his lap, sending tingles over her skin.God, Tia, he’s talking about his brother’s death.
“Accidents never should,” she said. “That’s why they’re so hard to accept. Though, to be fair, any death that isn’t from extreme old age is hard to accept.”
“I guess.” As he cut away the fabric, the points of impact became clearer. The dog had attacked from the rear, but its top teeth had embedded near the front of her shin and the bottom ones in the flesh underneath.
