“Hey.” His other hand comes up to cup my cheek, his thumb stroking my jawline. The touch is so unexpected, so intimate, that it momentarily distracts me from the pain in my hand. “Look at me,” he commands.
I do. I lift my eyes from the bloody mess of my palm and meet his. And for the first time, I reallylookat him. Not as the boy I knew, not as the obstacle in my way, but as the man he is now.
He’s almost thirty now, but he looks older in some ways, younger in others. There are faint lines etched at the corners of his eyes, laugh lines that weren’t there eight years ago. His skin is tanned a deep bronze, weathered by the sun, and it makes his brown eyes seem darker, more intense.
A small scar cuts through his left eyebrow, a thin white line I don’t remember. His hair is still thick and dark, but there are a few strands of silver at the temples, glinting in the light from the window. He’s leaner now, the softness of his youth replaced by the hard, sculpted muscle of a man who works with his body.
He’s not just handsome. He’s... formidable.
“All done,” he says, his voice pulling me from my examination.
I look down. The splinter is gone. Lying on the towel is a thick, ugly sliver of wood, at least an inch long. I stare at it, then back at him, a wave of relief so profound it makes me dizzy.
“Thank you,” I whisper, the words barely audible.
“You’re welcome,” he says. He notices a single drop of blood welling up from the small wound. “Does it still hurt?”
I flex my fingers, and a shooting pain radiates from my wrist up my forearm. I wince. “I think I twisted something when I fell,” I admit.
He glances over at Doggy, who has fallen asleep on my feet. “Your dog is as crazy as you are,” he says, a hint of a smile playing on his lips.
I shake my head, a real smile touching my lips for the first time all day. “He is quite well.”
“Is that why he was rescued from a well?” he asks, his tone deadpan.
The image that flashes through my mind—Doggy, a tiny, whimpering ball of fluff at the bottom of a dark, scary hole, and Willa’s determined, smudged face as she helped me haul him out—is suddenly, ridiculously funny. The tension of the last week, the pain in my wrist, the sheer absurdity of my situation—it all bubbles up and spills out. I start to laugh. It’s not a polite little giggle; it’s a deep, belly-shaking laugh that brings tears to my eyes.
He laughs with me, a deep, rumbling sound that vibrates through the floorboards and up my spine. The laugh lines around his eyes crinkle, and his whole face transforms. The hard, guarded man is gone, replaced by the boy I remember, the one with the easy smile and the mischievous glint in his eye. God, he is so handsome now.
“Are you sure you don’t have a concussion?” he asks when my laughter finally subsides into hiccups.
“Probably,” I laugh, wiping at the tears streaming down my cheeks.
He smiles, but it fades quickly, replaced by a look of genuine concern. “We should go to the hospital. You could be checked out. Make sure nothing’s broken.”
I shake my head, the familiar walls of defense shooting back up. “I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?” he presses, his eyes searching mine.
I look at him, at his brown eyes that are so full of concern it hurts to look at. And I do what I always do when I’m scared. I push. “Please don’t act like you care.”
I watch him swallow, the muscles in his throat working. The warmth in his eyes extinguishes, replaced by the familiar, guarded look I’ve come to expect. He doesn’t say anything, just presses the ice pack to my wrist.
And I want to take it back. The words hang in the air between us, a toxic cloud. He has hated me for whatever reason for so long... but he didn’t hate me for a couple of minutes there. He was kind. He was gentle. And I stupidly, stupidly reminded him why he should hate me. Shit.
The ice is a shock against my swollen skin, a biting cold that makes me gasp. He shifts the pack, pressing it to a different spot. I wince.
“Pain?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Cold.”
“Okay,” he says. He uses his thumb to rub small, slow circles just above the ice pack, on the sensitive skin of my inner wrist. And it feels good. It feels really, really good.
It shouldn’t feel good. It’s just a thumb. It’s just Boone. But it does. The warmth of his hand contrasts with the cold of the ice, and the sensation sends a shiver through me that has nothing to do with the temperature.
Suddenly, I’m that teenager again, head over heels in love with the brooding ranch hand. Suddenly, I’m eighteen years old, standing in the rain, wishing he would kiss me. His eyes study mine, his gaze so intense it feels like a physical touch. I need to look away. I should look away.
We’re interrupted by the sound of a truck pulling up outside, a loud, clunky engine that doesn’t sound like Knox’s or Rhett’s.
