Her hands slid from my face, and she hesitated before she took half a step back. I instantly missed her comfort and warmth, but her jaw locked.
“I also carry the hurt of the night,” she whispered, and her trembling fingers reached for the ties of her robe. “You aren’t alone, Roman. It marked me too.”
She inhaled deeply, and then undid the knot around her waist. Her robe fell open, and she pushed the pink satin from her shoulders.
The fabric slid to the floor and pooled at her feet.
My breaths stalled as I took her in.
I hadn’t thought about it before, but I’d never seen the bare skin of her arms. She always wore sweaters or long sleeves, but it was winter.
Now, though, she stood in front of me wearing a thin, short-sleeved top patterned with tiny blue flowers. She held her arms toward me, and something deep inside me twisted as I took her in.
The skin along both of her forearms was uneven and mottled, the texture subtly different from the rest. The pattern of it told a quiet, brutal story, one of skin that had once been badly burned and painstakingly repaired.
The kind of scars that only came from fire, and from surviving it.
My fingers brushed her skin before thinking better of it.
Palmer shuddered.
“Does this hurt?” I asked.
She shook her head.
So I kept going, letting my hands slide over the altered texture of her scars. They were beautiful. A testament to her strength and resilience.
“Why do you hide them?”
The moment the words left my mouth, I wondered whether I’d crossed a line. She didn’t seem bothered, though. She stared at my hands, watching the way they moved over her skin.
“They make people look at me differently,” she whispered. “I don’t want to be pitied or make people uncomfortable.”
A flare of anger sparked in me that she felt like she had to hide anything about herself at all. But when she lifted her gaze to meet mine, something in my mind clicked.
A memory crashed to the surface.
A small woman in a smoke-filled hallway.
I remembered her hair, and the hazel of her eyes as she blinked blearily up at me through the haze. I remembered dragging her through the smoke and heat, pulling her toward the exit, but I didn’t know what happened to her after that. She had lost consciousness and had bad burns, but the moment I handed her off to the paramedics, they’d pushed me aside and I’d had to turn around and rush right back into the building.
I blinked, and the memory dissolved as I came back to the present.
Back to her.
I stared at her with a newfound awe.
She had survived it too, and somehow, she still carried light in places I’d only ever held darkness. Palmer was soft and open and full of life. She had seen the worst parts of me—the ugliness I’d kept buried for years—and she was still here, reaching for me.
The truth struck through all my confusion and fear, bringing clarity. When I looked at Palmer, at her scars and her beautiful eyes, I didn’t feel guilt or shame…I felt seen. I felt understood.
Our pain wasn’t the same, but there was still something in it that made me feel less alone.
I closed the little distance she made between us and cradled her face in my hands.
“Palmer,” I said with a low huskiness that almost stole the next words. “For so long, I’d thought that night had only taken from me.” I stared at her, alive and breathing by some miracle. “Now, I realize that it has given something back, too. Not somethingto replace what I had. Not something better, but something…good.”
Her expression softened. Some of the sorrow morphed into hope. “Roman—”
