Only, this time, he was the one who was refusing to let go.
“You’re bleeding,” he muttered. “Come with me,” he added, then he wrapped his fingers around my wrist and led me toward the house. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember a single person ever taking my hand or any part of it and leading me anywhere, not even my mother. I’d held Cruz’s hand when he’d been little, but I’d always done the leading, the comforting. In the Army, I’d naturally led even before I’d become an officer.
I never followed.
Never.
Because following meant trusting someone else not to fuck up and get you lost or killed. I commanded my body to stop its forward movement and yank free of Sam’s hold, but my feet continued to put one in front of the other and my arm refused my bidding to pull away. I wanted to tell myself it was because I’d made Sam cry, but that was a whole other can of worms I didn’t want to open at the moment.
So that was where things stood. With me following tamely behind a guy I’d come here with the sole purpose of fucking, all while feeling like a piece of shit for having made said man cry.
What the fuck had I gotten myself into?
Chapter 4
Sam
I’d already figured the guy wasn’t a talker. But how had that translated into me turning into the chatterbox from hell? And what had possessed me to invite the man who’d so skillfully reduced me to tears with a cheap swipe at Mac’s memory inside my house and worse, into the inner sanctum that was my bathroom? As soon as we’d stepped into the room, I’d immediately sensed the jerk’s judgement as he took in the candles I had all around the huge soaking tub. Instead of calling him on it, though, I’d spent the last several minutes explaining every single thing I was doing as I’d cleaned his hand and examined it for glass.
And all the while, Matias had sat on the edge of my pretty tub silent as a church mouse yet still watching me like he was either waiting for the opportunity to attack or he was expecting me to do the attacking. In the bright light of my bathroom, I could still see the red imprint of my hand on his cheek, so I couldn’t exactly blame him for being on the defensive. I reminded myself that this man had saved Ryan’s life as I examined the cuts on his knuckles for any glass or debris.
“I don’t see anything in the cuts, but you might want to have a doctor take a look—”
“No,” was all Matias said in response, then he tugged at his hand. To my surprise, I found myself unwilling to release it.
What the hell was I doing? If the man wanted to go, I should let him go. I wanted him to go.
So then why were the next words out of my mouth, “At least let me bandage it up for you?”
I took his lack of movement as a yes. I returned to my vanity and opened the drawer where I kept the bandages. The silence was unnerving, so the chatterbox in me reared its ugly head again.
“Sorry, all I have is this,” I said as I held up the elastic bandage. “Ryan’s going through a hot-pink phase at the moment.” I winced when I realized I only had one kind of Band-Aid in my drawer. “And a glitter phase,” I murmured as I grabbed the box of shimmery Band-Aids. Matias barely acknowledged the glittery hot-pink bandages or the equally blinding elastic wrap.
Which only served to make me more nervous.
“At least the gauze is white,” I said as I deposited all the items on a little side table that I normally kept my glass of wine and book on when I was taking a bath. Since it felt awkward to be towering over Matias as he sat and I stood, I stepped into the shower to grab the teak stool I kept in there. It was only when I set it down in front of Matias and settled onto it that the verbal diarrhea started all over again.
“I keep this in the shower because I have a bad knee,” I explained as I motioned to the stool. “Not because of my age or anything,” I sputtered. “I fell. On my knee. When I was getting off the bus… years ago.”
Shut up, Sam.
“I mean, yeah, sometimes my joints start to hurt a bit after a long day and it’s nice to sit down in the shower…”
Shut up right now.
“But it’s not like I need a walker to get around yet. I have to say, though, that old adage about the weather affecting your joints as you get older seems to be true because lately I—”