Page 68 of Cutter's Hope

He left me and I dozed lightly, I wondered if I were going to be sore tomorrow… then I lazily drifted from that thought to wondering if I would care. He came back, made me drink some water and helped me into the shower. It was a pain in the ass holding my cast out of the spray but I managed a good wash and rinse of my body and only mildly got my hair wet.

Cutter was a man of his word. He had the sheets changed and the bed ready when I got out. He dried me off, tucked me in and kissed me with that same reverence of before and I melted. I couldn’t ever remember a time when anyone took such care of me…

He kissed me, and smoothed my hair back from my face, “Back before you know it… I wish my damn shower were big enough for two. You good?” he asked.

I smiled, “I’m good,” I whispered drowsily.

“Okay, back in a minute,” he promised again and I was alone.

I lay in the soothing dark, lulled by the sound of his small shower and the water lapping against the hull of his boat, the gentle bob and sway of the vessel in the harbor. This was peace. I opened my eyes, I didn’t want to fall asleep before he came back, despite how it sucked at my edges. Light from one of the portholes fell across the image of the sad girl I’d examined the first time I’d ever been in his bunk. I closed my eyes then. I didn’t want to think about him with anyone else. Not after what we’d just shared.

I was barely, vaguely aware of him coming back to bed, he slipped in behind me and pulled me back into the curve of his chest, kissing the back of my shoulder with that same reverence, making me sigh and drift off more soundly, more completely into the deepest, securest, dreamless and probably most restorative sleep I had ever had.

32

Cutter…

She slept soundly, and I drifted off right along with her. The sun was streaming bright through the portholes the next morning when the sound of people boarding the Mysteria Avenge jolted me awake.

I carefully slid my arm out from under the curve of Hope’s neck and slipped to the end of the bed. I pulled a pair of blue and white board shorts out of my cupboard without really caring and pulled them on. If it was some of the guys, which was likely, they didn’t want a view of my junk. Not that I cared. I stood up and stretched, yawning and plucked a hair tie off the hook from under my cut, replacing it. I whipped my long hair into a low pony as I trudged the length of my boat just for the first knock to fall on the hatch leading above deck.

“All right!” I called out and flung it open.

A keen girly excited shout and I was stumbling back into my living room confused, the glaring light of the outside which had stolen my vision resolved into the smiling pixie face of Li’l Bit who was legs around my hips and arms around my shoulders.

“Hi!” she crowed and laid one on me, her lips as soft as I remembered, lush and warm. Her enthusiasm caught me off guard and I froze of a second, eyes wide, hands on her hips and the world lost focus for a second.

Damn. I was completely caught off guard. I’d wanted the woman in my arms for fucking ages, had been bitter as hell to let her go back to her man, to her life and now she was here, warm and enthusiastic and all I could think about was putting her down, putting some distance between us before…

“Eh he he hem…”

Fuck.

33

Hope…

Fierce, hot, intense and immediate. Jealousy ripped through me like a rocket propelled grenade. I finished buttoning the front of my black shirt dress and watched the man I loved, who supposedly loved me back, kiss another woman in front of me and I didn’t have a damn thing I could really say. I reached down and pulled my flip flops out of the pocket on the side of my pack that just happened to fit the two pairs I had perfectly and dropped the black ones to the carpet by the bunk step.

I shrugged my feet into them while Cutter stared at the woman in disbelief and then it registered, not what I was looking at butwho.Fuck. It was the sad green eyed girl. The one whose picture was taped, wrinkled and forlorn to the inside of Cutter’s bunk. Where he could wake up to her image every morning and fall asleep looking at it every night… like I had last night.

Holy Christ. It hurt. Deep in the center of my chest, it fucking hurt and I just didn’t have any room to process, to deal with it, so I did what I do best. I put on my resting bitch face and ghosted up the hall. I leaned my shoulder nonchalantly against the beautifully restored, wood paneled wall and cleared my throat.

“Eh he he hem…”

Cutter’s eyes drifted shut and his shoulders dropped and I could see it written all over his face…Fuck.The woman turned her head and looked taken aback and blushed furiously.

“Oh…” she said and unwound herself from Cutter’s body, sliding down him to the floor. I kept my face impassive. I wasn’t going to fucking cry. It wasn’t happening.

My phone started ringing, shrill, filling the weighted silence as the thump of another man boarding the boat, made the woman and Cutter both redirect their attention to the open hatch. My phone rang and rang and I went for it, pushing off the wall and reaching for it with my casted arm, which I really,reallywanted to use to beat the fuck out of the man I’d let fuck me last night.

I picked it up off the table as Cutter drew breath to speak. I put my hand up and arched a brow coldly. I didn’t want to hear it. Not right now. Not yet. I wanted him to save it.

“Hello?”

“It’s Marlin, the doc from up north is in town, I’m taking your sister to the clinic to have him check her out and she wanted me to call you, wants you to be there for the exam.”

“Location.”

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