Page 25 of DFF: Delicate Freakin' Flower

“What’d I do?”

“You’re limping,” he pointed out, making me aware of the pain in my foot that I'd been doing my best to ignore.

“It’s a graceful limp, though.”

“You’re limping like someone ran from raccoons barefoot.”

He crouched in front of me, unzipping the kit. “Let me see.”

I hesitated, then lifted my leg, wincing as I peeled off the sock. A shallow but ugly scrape curved around the side of my ankle, red and faintly swollen.

Webb didn’t react, he just opened a small packet with a wipe in it and started cleaning it with steady, warm hands.

“You’re good at this,” I muttered, watching the way he moved—calm and sure, like he’d done this a hundred times.

He shrugged. “Comes with the territory.”

“What territory?”

He glanced up. “Being the one who stays calm while everyone else falls apart. And having so many brothers.”

That made my chest squeeze, but I didn’t say anything and hid it behind a snort. The sting of antiseptic made me flinch, and his grip tightened just slightly, enough to steady me.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

“It’s okay. It kind of feels nice, you know, not doing everything alone.”

His eyes flicked to mine at that, unreadable for a second. Then he looked away, focused on unwrapping a bandage. “You don’t have to anymore.”

The words were quiet, but they landed like they meant something.

He smoothed it over the cut, then stood up and tossed the wrappers into the trash. I wiggled my toes experimentally and leaned back with a sigh.

“Webb?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks. For the fire, the medical attention, the weird raccoon jokes. All of it.” It was a lame list, but right now, it all meant the world to me.

He gave me a soft nod, leaning against the table now. “You’re welcome, you little maniac.”

The silence that followed wasn’t heavy, it felt like something settled into place. Something solid.

And just before I drifted off where I sat, my ankle wrapped and my guard finally lowered, I thought maybe this cabin wasn’t the end of the line. Perhaps it was the start of something else—a new Gabby.

Chapter Ten

Gabby

The morning began with a deceptively peaceful calm—birds chirping cheerfully, the sun climbing over the trees, and a soft breeze drifting through the branches like Mother Nature was trying to convince me she hadn’t just tried to kill me with bugs and emotional trauma the night before.

I stepped out of the cabin in flip-flops, the only thing I had to hand that didn’t involve laces or a full commitment to life. I was still half-asleep, my hair up in a lopsided bun, and wearing an old, oversized T-shirt and the expression of a woman who just needed to pee and not die doing it.

The outhouse was thirty feet away, which was an easy distance until the bushes rustled.

I froze mid-step, both flip-flops immediately trying to flee in opposite directions like traitorous sandals with no regard for survival.

“Oh, hell no,” I muttered, scanning the undergrowth like it wasJurassic Park. “No one talks about this part when they say nature’s healing. This is how people die in flip-flops.”

---