“It's going to scar.”
“I've got plenty of scars. One more won't matter.”
His hand dropped from my face and moved lower. Fingers brushing over my collarbone, down to my ribs where the worst of the bruising was. I felt him freeze when he saw it.
“Fucking hell, Troy.”
The bruise spread across my left side, dark purple and mottled with yellow at the edges. Three distinct impacts where the masked man had methodically destroyed my kidney.
“It looks worse than it is,” I lied.
“Bullshit. This is internal damage. You could have ruptured something.”
“I didn't.”
“You don't know that.”
“I'm still here. Still breathing. That's good enough.”
He looked up at me. I could see the flecks of gold in his dark eyes, the tension in his jaw, the way his breathing had gone shallow.
“Stay here,” he said. “I'm getting supplies.”
He stood and disappeared into the bathroom. I heard him opening cabinets, gathering whatever medical shit he kept on hand.
He returned with a first aid kit that looked professional-grade. Set it on the table and started pulling out supplies with the efficiency of someone who'd done this before.
“How do you know how to do all this?” I asked. I needed to say something before the silence turned into a thing I couldn't ignore.
“I own a rehab and recovery center,” he said, opening an antiseptic wipe. “Work with injured athletes mostly. Fighters, runners, anyone who's pushed their body too far and needs help putting it back together.”
That stopped me. “You own a recovery center?”
“Yeah. Been running it for about five years now.” He moved closer again, back to crouching beside my chair so he could reach my ribs. “This is going to sting.”
The antiseptic hit the scrape on my side and I hissed, muscles tensing automatically.
“Easy,” Declan said. His free hand settled on my shoulder, steady and grounding. “Just breathe through it.”
I breathed and tried to focus on anything except the way his hand felt on my bare skin.
“Why a recovery center?” I asked.
He was quiet for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was softer. Sadder.
“Your mother believed in helping people heal,” he said. “Not just physically. She thought everyone deserved a chance to rebuild after they'd been broken. After she died, I needed to dosomething that mattered. Something she would have believed in.”
“She wanted to be a nurse,” I said, remembering. “Before she got sick. Used to talk about going back to school for it.”
“I know. She told me about that. About wanting to help people find purpose again after trauma.” His hand moved lower, pressing gently against my ribs to check for breaks. “The center is my way of keeping that alive. Keeping her alive, in a way.”
I didn't know what to say to that. Didn't know how to process the fact that Declan had built an entire business around honoring my mother's memory while I'd spent years resenting him for surviving her.
“Does it hurt here?” he asked, pressing slightly harder.
“Yeah.”
“Here?”
