I’ll use anything in my power that could prevent it.
I watch her pace the small space between my bed, my desk, and my dresser. She loops her hairband around her wrist and tugs at it as she walks, a nervous habit I’ve seen her do a hundred times over the last several weeks.
“You need to relax.”
I barely manage to bite back the Hellcat I naturally want to tack onto the end of that statement.
Even without it, her glare cuts my way, practically slicing me open. “What I need is for you to stop telling me what to do.”
I hold up my hands in surrender because if I were in her position, I would be objecting the same way. “Fair enough.”
This isn’t going to be easy.
We all knew that as soon as I suggested it.
I guess I had hoped that once she got here, in this space where we have shared more than one great night together, that she might allow her guard to drop, even just a little bit. That seems to be wishful thinking.
But this is untenable.
It isn’t good for her or her recovery, and that’s all I want.
I move toward her, and she eyes me warily but stops pacing. When I finally reach her, I take her face in my hands and tip it up, risking the full force of her fury this close. “Please, let me help you relax.”
She swallows thickly, her pupils dilating slightly. “How?”
I know exactly where her mind is going, but there’s no way that’s happening when she’s recovering from a brain injury and all the other damage that was done to her body…even if I might want it to.
“I’m going to draw you a bath.”
Her sharp laughter echoes through the loft, the sound so unfamiliar from the woman who tries so damn hard to be so damn tough every moment of her life. “A bath?”
“I have an old claw-foot tub in the bathroom.”
She nods slowly, the motion shifting her smooth skin across my fingertips in a way that makes me never want to take my hands off her. “I know. I’ve seen it.”
“I’ve never used it.”
One of her eyebrows wings up. “Really?”
I shake my head. “I don’t think I would fit.”
She grins, the first real sign of the ice cracking since we left the hospital. “You definitely wouldn’t.”
It may be a huge mistake to push right now, but I can’t help myself. I dip my head and risk drifting my lips across hers tentatively. “So…you’ll be the first one. You can christen it. And the hot water will help with all your sore muscles.”
She relaxes slightly against me, and I kiss her again, keeping it slow and gentle. An apology for what I have to put her through written in every brush of our lips. When I pull away, I can see that some of her anger has dissipated.
Her shoulders fall. “Okay, fine.”
I grin and drop a kiss on her forehead. “I’m going to go grab your bags. Make yourself comfortable in the meantime.”
She wanders over to the bed as I hustle down the stairs and snag her bags, and by the time I’m back up in the loft, she’s kicked off her shoes and has made her way into the bathroom.
I set her bags down near my dresser and rifle through them to see what her mom put in them that might be useful. When my hand finds the small bottle of bubble bath in with the bathroom items, I release a relieved breath.
Thank you, Caroline.
In the bathroom, Bishop stands at the sink, staring into the mirror, looking at the bruise along her collar bone from when she hit the pavement.
