Page 68 of Handcuffed to the Bear

Someone was going to come along eventually and discover her here.

She freed a hand from the crutches—her formerly handcuffed hand, with tape tugging lightly where they’d bandaged the cuffs’ chafed places. Lightly, she tapped at the door.

There was no answer, but it swung open a little further under the impact of her hand. She could see into the room now. It was like hers, with the same bed and side table and chair, all in more or less the same orientation to each other, but reversed since his room was on the other side of the hallway. The blinds were closed. Sunlight winked around the edges, casting the room into peaceful sun-striped shade that made her think momentarily of leaf shadows on a forest floor.

Jack was a large, still lump in the bed.

Sleeping, Casey thought.

You should leave him to it.

But instead, she crutched carefully into the room, over to the side of the bed.

She hadn’t really been able to believe he was okay until seeing him with her own eyes. Now, a tight knot in her chest let go, and she sagged on the crutches.

He’d made it out.

They’d both made it out.

The growing ache in her good leg let her know she needed to get off her feet before she fell over. She’d meant to go back to her room after seeing him, but maybe it would be all right to stay here for a little while.

She leaned her crutches against the side of the chair and carefully lowered herself into it. Then she studied Jack with more attention, taking in each detail of the face that had in so short a time grown beloved to her.

He looked tired and ill. His face was scraped and bruised, with two swollen purple marks on either side of his lower lip—he’d cut his mouth, she recalled, chewing through the rope to cast off the boat.

His arms rested on top of the heavy blanket covering him. Both of them were a patchwork of bandages and open-to-the-air, stitched-up cuts like her own incision. His grizzly tat was half hidden under bandages, and there was an IV in his other arm.

His right wrist was girdled with fading bruises, a twin to her own.

She reached out with her left hand, lightly resting it against his: wrist to wrist, hand to hand.

Strange how used to it she’d grown.

“I’m glad you’re okay,” she whispered.

Jack stirred in his sleep, turning his face toward her, as if he knew she was there. A light breath whistled out between his parted lips.

Casey wanted with all her heart to lean down and kiss those lips. Like Sleeping Beauty in reverse .... except she was, of course, no princess, and her prince was more like a knight in stained and battered armor.

He’d earned his rest. She didn’t want to wake him.

Instead she settled for kissing his forehead, a light brush of her mouth across his skin.

He didn’t wake, but he seemed to lean into her touch.

She kissed him again, pressing her lips to the soft skin at the corner of his eye, where a web of fine lines had relaxed into near invisibility. Then she bowed her head and rested her temple against his for a long moment.

She closed her eyes.

Calmness seeped into her, driving out the lingering chill from the island. All her discomforts and hurts, from the ache in her leg to the burn of her shoulder muscles from the unaccustomed use of the crutches, receded until it was nothing but background noise.

There was only this—the light pressure of Jack’s skin against hers, the nearness of him, the smell of his skin.

She should go back to her room, but she only wanted to sleep ...

Someone cleared their throat in the doorway.

Casey jolted upright, blinking.

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