“I’ve hauled firewood with worse.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to.”
He looks at me then—really looks—and something in his expression shifts. Softens. Like he’s not used to someone worrying about him. Like he’s not sure what to do with it.
“It’s not that bad,” he says finally. “Just stiff.”
“I know some massage techniques. For muscle tension.” The words are out before I can stop them. “My ex had back problems, and I took a class, and—” I’m rambling. Why am I rambling? “I could help. If you wanted.”
Finn goes very still.
The fire crackles. The wind howls. The space between us feels charged with something dangerous and inevitable.
“You don’t have to,” he says, but his voice is rough, and he doesn’t move away.
“I know.” I take a breath, steady myself. “But I want to. Let me help you, Finn.”
The silence stretches. His gray eyes search my face, looking for something I hope he finds.
Then, slowly, he nods.
“Okay.”
One word. But the way he says it—quiet, almost reluctant—makes my breath catch in my throat.
I have no idea what I’m doing. I offered to help with his leg, and somehow it feels like I’m offering something more. Something I’m not sure I’m ready to give.
But I don’t take it back. I tell myself it’s just a massage, just one person helping another, and if my hands are shaking slightly as I move toward him, that’s just the cold.
It’s definitely just the cold.
Chapter 8
FINN
This is a mistake.
I know it even as I lower myself onto the couch, even as Marcella kneels beside me with that determined look on her face. Every instinct I have screams to get up, make an excuse, retreat to the workshop where I can sand something until my hands stop shaking.
But my leg hurts. It’s been hurting all day, the cold seeping into old wounds and making the scar tissue ache like it’s fresh. And she looked at me with those brown eyes and saidlet me help you, and I couldn’t say no.
Couldn’t. Not wouldn’t. Couldn’t.
That distinction terrifies me.
“You’ll need to...” She gestures at my jeans. “I can’t really work through denim.”
Right. Of course.
I stand long enough to undo my belt, shove the jeans down past my knees. The scars are visible immediately—a map of raised tissue on my left thigh, puckered and pale against the rest of my skin. Shrapnel wounds. Surgical scars. Evidence of the day everything ended.
I wait for her to flinch. To look away. To make some excuse about why this isn’t a good idea after all.
She doesn’t.
“Sit,” she says softly, and I do.
Her hands are warm.
