I knew that tone.
I hated that I had told her to ever call me that.
“Alexander, Star Shine,” I said, then looked up at her.
Her eyes were on the top of my thigh.
Seeing the end of my thigh.
She swallowed, then slowly she stepped forward, “What happened?”
“Tell you in a minute. You okay?”
She looked at me, and then she nodded.
Then I watched as she bit that bottom lip I’d fantasized about all these years, then she asked, “Anything I can do to help?”
I lifted my brows in surprise, “Really?”
She nodded.
I lifted my chin to the bottle of lotion on the bedside table. “Put some of that in your palms and rub it on the end of my thigh.”
She moved through my room and reached the bottle, then I watched as she swallowed and looked at the picture frame I had sitting there.
It was of us at Christmas when she was sixteen and I was nineteen.
She smiled, then got some lotion, rubbed her hands together, and then knelt in front of me. Slowly, she brought her hands up and halted for a beat as she asked, “I won’t hurt you, right?”
I shook my head, “No.”
She nodded, then, tentatively, she rubbed the lotion on my stump, “How’d this happen?”
“Anyone asked that besides you, they’d get the answer that it happened overseas, and I can’t talk about it.”
She looked up at me as she kept rubbing the lotion into my skin, “And me?”
“We were on a mission. My team and I were sent to infiltrate a jihadist group, take them out, and capture the leader. We did it. Unfortunately, we missed the bastard smirking as we left, ‘cause we walked right into an IED land mine.”
She winced, “I’m so sorry.”
I shook my head, “Took a while, but I’m getting better.”
She nodded, “And your team?”
I shook my head.
She winced, “I’m so sorry.”
I winked.
“How did I not notice this?” she asked as she stared down at my prosthesis.
“It was dark,” I said simply.
Her face was saddened.
That cut.
