Page 113 of Breaking His Exile

“The one where you’ve already decided what happens next and you’re not going to ask me.”

He crouched in the open door, eye level with her. “I’m not leaving. I’m getting the med kit. It’s in the cab.”

She held his jacket for one more beat. Then she let go.

As he grabbed the med kit from the back of the truck, he spotted Bear coming toward him. He waved the mountain of a man off—Bear could examine her back at the ranch, but right now, he didn’t want anyone else touching her. He was too wired, adrenaline spilling into his blood, and he didn’t trust himself to stand back and watch another man’s hands moving over her skin, even if those hands were just Bear’s.

He cracked the kit open. Gauze. Antiseptic. Butterfly strips. He turned back to her and took her wrist. The skin was torn and raw and bloody, but the wrist itself was intact. No fracture that he could feel. He cleaned it. She hissed through her teeth but didn’t pull away.

He cleaned her lip. Dabbed the antiseptic along the split skin. She watched him work with her one good eye.

“You could have gone after him,” she said softly. “Mal.”

He pressed a butterfly strip along the split in her lip. “I could have.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because you were on the ground, and nothing else mattered.”

She stared at him. Her one good eye filled. She blinked, and a fat tear slid down her cheek. She pressed her forehead against his jaw and held there, breathing. A fine tremor shook her shoulders as the adrenaline left her body in slow, shuddering waves.

He put his hand on the back of her head. Held her. His fingers caught in her hair and he felt the knot where her skull had connected with Hobbs’s face.

Finally, Rainey lifted her head from his jaw and smiled down at Tilly sitting at his feet. Tilly looked at her and gave a whole-body wiggle.

“Come here,” Rainey said to the dog.

Tilly stood on her back legs and pushed her blocky head into Rainey’s lap.

Rainey bent over her and pressed her face into the dog’s fur. She made a sound that was half sob and half laugh. “You are the best girl, Tilly. The absolute best ever. You will get the treats from now on. Anything your little doggie heart desires, it’s yours.”

Evander rubbed his hand over his dog’s head. “Agreed.”

thirty-two

The gunshot cracked behind them and Evander didn’t turn. He carried Rainey deeper into the trees, her weight solid against his chest, her blood warm on his neck where it had soaked through the flannel. The sounds of the firefight receded—shouts, the metallic click of handcuffs, Brandt’s voice issuing orders—and the woods closed around them in that particular silence that came after violence, heavy and listening.

He found a fallen pine twenty yards in. Set her down against the trunk with his back to the clearing and his rifle still slung across his body because he hadn’t thought to drop it and his hands were busy with her face, her arms, the places where Hobbs had put his hands.

“Rainey.”

Her eyes fluttered. Half-focused. The left temple was swollen, blood matting her hair above the ear where Hobbs had hit her. Her lip was split. The zip ties had left raw rings around both wrists, the right worse than the left where she’d worked it against metal for hours. He checked her pupils. Equal. Reactive. Slow, but reactive.

Concussion. Not life-threatening. Not yet.

Tilly pressed against Rainey’s hip, whining low in her throat. The dog’s muzzle was dark with someone else’s blood—Gemma’s, he assumed, from the sounds he’d heard—and she kept nudging Rainey’s hand with her nose, demanding acknowledgment.

“She’s okay,” Evander told the dog. His voice came out steadier than he expected. “She’s okay.”

Rainey’s hand found his wrist. Her fingers were cold. She squeezed. Once. Hard.

“I’m here,” she said. Her voice scraped. “Stop looking at me like I’m dying.”

“I’m not.”

“You are. You have your doctor face on.” She tried to sit up straighter. Winced. “Christ. Hobbs hits like my father on a Tuesday.”

Evander pressed her back against the tree. His palm cradled the back of her head, careful of the swelling. “Don’t move. Not yet.”