"Where did you learn to fight like that?" she asks quietly. "The way you moved tonight… It's not just natural talent. Someone taught you. Or you learned somewhere."
The question cuts through the haze of want. Brings me back to reality. To who I am and what I've done.
This is the moment. The moment I tell her the truth and watch her walk away. Because she will walk away. Everyone does once they know.
But I need her to know. Need her to understand exactly what she's dealing with.
"Prison," I say.
Her hand stills. "What?"
"I learned to fight in prison. Spent ten years there." I meet her eyes directly. No point sugarcoating it now. "Got out two years ago."
She's staring at me. Processing. Her hand's still on my face, fingers still touching my jaw, but she's frozen. I wait for her to ask what I did. Why I was locked up. What kind of monster goes away for ten years.
But she doesn't ask.
She just says, "That must have been hard."
Of all the responses I expected, that wasn't one of them.
"Hard?" I repeat.
"Ten years. That's a long time to lose." She goes back to cleaning the cut, her touch still gentle. "I can't imagine what that was like."
"You're not going to ask what I did?"
She pauses, considers. "Do you want to tell me?"
Do I? Part of me wants her to know everything. Wants to lay it all out so there's no surprises later, no moment where she finds out and feels betrayed. But another part, the part that's currently drowning in the smell of strawberries and the feel of her hands on my skin, wants to keep this moment exactly as it is.
"No," I say finally. "Not yet."
"Okay." She applies a butterfly bandage to the cut. "Then I won't ask."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that." She steps back slightly to examine her work. "People have pasts, Danny. I'm not going to judge you for yours when I don't know anything about it."
"Most people would run."
"I'm not most people."
No. She's really not.
She reaches for my hands. "Let me see."
I hold them out. They look worse than they feel. Knuckles split and swollen, blood dried between my fingers, bruises already forming. Standard post-fight condition.
She sucks in a breath. "Danny..."
"It's fine."
"You keep saying that, but this doesn't look fine." She takes my right hand in both of hers, and I have to bite back a groan.
Her hands are small. Soft. Completely unblemished compared to mine. The contrast is stark, beauty holding brutality. She should be repulsed, touching something this damaged, this violent.
But she's docile. Like my hands are something worth taking care of.
