Page 84 of Rune’s Solace

I stood there in his arms with blood in my mouth and bruises already starting to hurt and his shirt twisted in both my fists, and I was still scared. I think some part of me probably would be for a long time.

But I wasn’t alone with it anymore.

I hadn’t been for a long time.

I just finally knew it.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

BY THE TIME I got her back to the cabin, I’d washed my hands three times.

Once at the clubhouse sink while Horse stood beside me and didn’t say a word, once in Josie’s kitchen because I looked down and found blood still dried into the lines around my nails, and then again here, at my own sink, with Amy sitting on the bed ten feet behind me while I ran the water hot enough to turn my hands red.

I knew they were clean. I’d known it the second time, probably the first, but I kept scrubbing anyway because every time I looked at them I saw that room again, saw his hand around her throat and her body hitting that concrete, and there are some things soap doesn’t do a damn thing for.

“Rune.”

“Yeah.”

“They’re clean.”

I shut the water off and stood there a second with both hands braced on the sink, head down, listening to her breathe behind me. I’d spent the better part of that morning believing I might never hear that sound again, and now she was ten feet away, alive and safe in my cabin, and somehow turning around to look at her felt harder than coming through that door had.

I dried my hands and did it anyway.

She’d showered at the clubhouse before we came down, Brenda helping her while Horse and I stood outside. Her hair was still wet, combed back from her face so there was nothing hiding the bruise coming up along her jaw.

Or the marks around her throat.

My eyes caught there and stayed too long, and something ugly started moving through me again, so I made myself look away before it got any ground.

“Come here,” I said.

She looked around my cabin. “I’m already here.”

“Smartass.”

Her mouth moved, barely, but it moved. Banged up, exhausted, and she still had enough Amy left in her to give me shit. It wasn’t much of a smile, but I’d have taken less.

I pulled the chair from beside the window and set it in front of her, then sat with the first-aid kit between my boots and started laying things out.

“You know Mystic already did all this.”

“Mystic isn’t me.”

“No. He’s much more pleasant.”

I looked up at her until that little almost-smile came back, then wet a piece of gauze and reached for her face.

My hand stopped before I touched her. I didn’t mean for it to. Didn’t even know I’d done it until I saw her eyes drop to the space between my fingers and her skin, and when she looked back at me there was something in her face that told me she understood before I did.

“Rune.”

“Yeah.”

“You can touch me.”

My throat tightened. “I know.”