Aloud, he said, “No wonder you look like you’ve been through the Crusades and back.” He realized his mistake as soon as he made it. No woman liked to be told she looked like hammered shit. “I mean, you’re beautiful, of course. It’s just that your exhaustion is palpable. You can hear my mind spinning, and I can feel your fatigue. We make quite a pair.”
“Yeah.” She released a sleepy sigh. “Iwantto sleep. I just can’t.”
“Who could with all this racket?”
“No.” He could hear a subtle rustle and knew it was the sound of her hair shushing against the pillow as she shook her head. “It’s not that. Or…it’s notjustthat. Every time I close my eyes, I see…him.”
His heart softened. “Your brother?”
“No,” she countered immediately. “I refuse to let my mind go there. I’m not ready for that. Not yet.”
He’d never had a family, so he didn’t know what it was to lose someone who shared his blood. But he’d flown enough missions with good men who hadn’t returned from their assignment. He could sympathize with the need to push away the horror. To shove it all into a little box covered in razor blades that threatened to slice his fingers to ribbons if he ever tried to open it.
He hated even uttering the words. They sat on his tongue like poison pills. But it was clear she wanted to talk about it, and he felt honored she’d decided to talk about it withhim. “So, then, you see the face of the man who…” He trailed off, unable to speak the rest of the thought aloud.
He marveled at women—their softness and grace, the sound of their laughter, the way they moved. Nothing in the whole world was as wonderful, mysterious, frustrating, and fascinating as a woman. And he could not understand howanyman could countenance the thought of defiling something so beautiful.
“The one who attacked me,” she whispered, and the thickness in her voice had him curling the quilt into his fists. “When I close my eyes, I see the look on his face when he grabbed the back of my head and told me he was going to enjoy making me scream and making Cooper watch. I taste the marijuana on his lips when he shoved his tongue down my throat. I smell his cheap cologne and his filthy body odor when he unbuttoned his fly and?—”
Her voice cracked like it’d been slammed against a sharp edge. He wanted to climb into bed with her. Hold her tight so he could help keep her demons at bay. But the last thing she needed—indeed, the last thing she likely wanted—was for another hairy, heavy-handed man to touch her.
Instead, he reached his hand over the side of the mattress, palm-up. A silent offering.
For the span of a dozen heartbeats, she didn’t speak, didn’t move. He wondered if she’d seen his gesture. And then he wondered if she’d seen his gesture and had chosen to ignore it.
He was about to drop his hand when it happened.
Her cool, slender fingers threaded through his. So slowly. So softly. So tentatively that he dared not move. Barely dared to breathe.
When her palm kissed his, his first thought was relief that she’d accepted what little comfort he could offer. His second thought was that her hand felt tiny and fragile inside his own. His third thought?
Well, it wasn’t really a thought. It was more of a physical response.
He shivered. And it had nothing to do with the cold shower or the paper-thin quilt.
Carefully, looking for any indication that she might disapprove, he slowly smoothed his thumb along the soft skin on the side of her hand. One. Twice. Three times. And then on methodical repeat when she didn’t snatch her hand away.
“Thank you,” she breathed, and he felt her strength as clearly as he felt her brittleness. She was holding herself together by sheer force of will.
He knew how much that hurt. It was painful to shore up the broken pieces of one’s heart with nothing but the glue of grit and guts because the alternative was to fall apart. And once that happened, once the fragments were allowed to split and splinter, they might never be back together again.
“What that man did to you—” He was cut off when Knox let loose with a series of machine gun snores. He was about to punch the sonofabitch in the face with his free hand. But Knox rolled onto his side, and his snoring was suddenly reduced to deep, sonorous breaths.
Thank Christ for small miracles,Hew thought irritably before returning his attention to the feel of Sabrina’s hand inside his own. To the subtle sound of her ragged breaths that told him she was once more fighting back tears.
“What that man did to you doesn’t define you, Sabrina,” he assured her. “No more than the sexual assault I suffered in foster care defines me. Those things happenedtous. But they aren’tus.”
“Y-you were in foster care?” He could hear the interest in her tone despite the sogginess of her voice.
“My whole life,” he told her. “I never knew my parents.”
“I’m sorry,” she breathed.
“I’m not.” His response was instantaneous. “It’s impossible to miss something you never had.”
A small silence followed that pronouncement, and he wondered if he’d been too blunt. Britt had once accused him of being as subtle as a sledgehammer.
“I knew both of my parents,” she admitted quietly. “But sometimes I wish I hadn’t. If I’d never known them, I’d never have had to admit they loved their friends and their drugs and their booze more than they ever loved me or Cooper. I’d never have known what it was to wait for them to walk through the front door because they’d been gone for five days and we were down to our last can of corn and our last sleeve of saltines.”
