"Your jaw?" He tilted my chin, testing the joint. "Open."
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
His fingers fell away. "Raven?—"
But I shook my head. "Don't." He didn't have to say the words. I could hear what he was going to say in the way he touched me and spoke my name. Reaching out, I found his wrist and held it.
He went completely still.
I turned his hand over and ran my thumb across his knuckles. They were swollen and split in places. I could feel the ridges of healing skin, the rough patches where his fists had connected with my body hard enough to break his own skin open.
He'd hurt himself hitting me. Every mark he'd left on my body had cost him, too. Not just emotionally, but physically. His knuckles were a mirror of my bruises, a matching set, cause and effect written in damaged skin.
"These need bandaging too," I said.
"They're fine."
"They're not fine." I held his hand and pressed my thumb into a split knuckle and felt him flinch. "Sit down."
He sat and I stepped closer to him, close enough that our knees touched. I found the first aid kit by feel. Opened it. Located the antiseptic by smell, the bandages by texture, double checking with him that I had the right thing when I couldn't tell.
And I cleaned his hands.
The same hands that had left the bruises now sat still in his lap while I tended them. I worked by touch, tracing each knuckle, each cut, each piece of damaged skin. He didn't move or make a sound the entire time.
"Does it hurt?" I asked.
"No."
Liar. But I didn't push.
I wrapped his knuckles. Taped the gauze. Let my fingers linger on his palm.
Then I leaned forward and pressed my forehead against his. Gently. Mindful of my bruises, of his exhaustion, of the thousand broken things between us.
His breath stuttered. His hand came up and cupped the back of my neck, not pulling, just resting there. Warm. Steady. An anchor in the storm.
"I don't forgive you yet," I whispered.
"I know."
"I might not forgive you for a long time."
"I know."
"But I understand why you did it. I hate that I understand, but I do. And I'm grateful you saved my life."
His forehead pressed harder against mine. His thumb stroked the base of my skull. And his breathing finally—finally—broke. Not a sob. Not like the one I'd heard in the warehouse, the last sound before the darkness took me. This was something quieter. More devastating. The sound of a man who'd been holding the weight of the world releasing one single, shaking breath.
I held his face in my hands. Traced his jaw, his cheekbones, his closed eyes. Mapped him the way I'd done the first night we met, when I'd reached up and touched a stranger's face in a dark alley and felt my whole world shift on its axis.
It was the same face. The same man.
Yet everything was different.
I dropped my hands and straightened, letting the distance settle between us again because right now, it was necessary.
"I need to sleep," I said.
