Page 7 of Kandie Shoppe

His tread is heavy as he moves around in my bathroom. I can just imagine him knocking over my skincare and touching my make-up brushes even though I don’t really wear make-up.

“Under the cabinet,” I call exasperated.

“I heard you the first time,” he calls back just as grumpily.

“Obviously you can’t see,” I say, just as he strides out of the bathroom with the kit and several towels.

“What’s that?” Quirking an eyebrow, he dares me to repeat it.

“I said obviously you can’t see.” Feeling good about the fact I’m not letting him intimidate me, I roll my eyes a little.

“Hmm, well, it’s just as obvious you were wrong.” He waves the kit with one hand, sitting the towels on my nightstand. Quickly, he assesses the bruises on the side of my face.

“Let me see.” His firm fingers turn my head from side to side. The ice blue of his irises hardens to laser sharpness.

“Who did this to you?” He’s demanding now. Pushing down the weakness, I meet his gaze head on. “I haven’t needed a hero since they ran my daddy out of this town.”

Releasing my chin, bristling, he takes a step back and I think for a second that he’s going to leave. After a moment where I busy myself plucking the sheet and not meeting his gaze, he settles back in getting what he needs from the kit.

Grabbing a soapy towel, he starts cleaning my face. The answer as to what he was doing is answered when I smell the light scent of my facial cleanser on the towel.

“Ow.” It hurts despite the care he’s taking not to cause me pain.

“Sorry. You don’t want it to get infected.” Turning my face for better access, he cleans the wound with fast, precise motions.

Settling in for his torment, I allow my gaze to rake over his hard features, eating up every savage beauty I’ve been denied seeing up close.

I bite back more sounds even when I feel the sizzle and sting of the peroxide. Once he finishes with the side of my face, he moves down to my neck.

He cleans a spot I didn’t even realize had an injury.

“Why do you smell like beer?” His eyes search mine for a brief moment before he turns back to cleaning my various bruises and wounds. He tsks, tuts, mutters, and curses with increasing ferocity as he cleans every lesion on my body. By the time he reaches the abrasions on my knees, he’s fallen silent.

His whole mood is don’t talk to me. The room seems almost too small for the emotions spiraling through us.

I know it’s taking everything in him not to rail and demand I tell him who the culprits are. But he knows better than anyone how my family does things. How I do things.

Finally, when he’s done, he meticulously cleans up after himself.

Disappearing into my bathroom, he comes back in the main area of the loft holding a white pill bottle before heading to my small kitchenette filling a glass with water.

“Here.” He hands me some ibuprofen. “You’ll thank me in the morning.”

I take them. “Thanks.” Tossing them back, I hold my hand out for the water. “I appreciate everything you did for me tonight. I’ll make you a caramel cake. You just let me know when you want it.”

Our gazes snag, so much left unsaid between us. I almost hate I offered to make his favorite cake, which so happens to be my claim to fame.

“I’ll hold you to that,” he says. My tummy drops. Why does it feel like he means he’ll be holding me to more than the cake?

Waiting, I wonder why he’s not leaving. He turns. My heart plummets even though I all but asked him to leave. He walks over to the door. Words swell in my throat like something is stuck there.

Don’t say anything. Don’t ask him to stay. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.

I get ready to pipe up to say, “Thanks, see ya,” — anything with a fake cheerfulness. No point in acting ungrateful.

My mouth clamps shut when he locks the door, toes off his boots and heads over to the cozy nook where I have a small library just for me. He settles in the old La-Z-Boy I repurposed and re-stuffed, reupholstered with my favorite color of robin’s egg blue.

The chair is huge, but it may as well be doll size with the way his six-foot-seven frame dwarfs the thing.

---