It was all too much.
And Zeke was everything.
Right when she’d recognized that, she’d almost lost him.
She didn’t want him to have to deal with her meltdown, but she’d woken him anyway and then he’d gone and been so sensitive, giving her the space she needed to put herself back together.
All she wanted to do was crawl into his arms, hold him tight and sob some more because anxious and overwhelmed didn’t begin to cover how she felt, but that was extraordinarily selfish, and not something he needed. She’d been too inconsiderate of him in the past to continue being that way now.
“Be a goddamn professional,” she whispered, rummaging in her pack for the arnica gel and then almost sobbing again at the exquisite irony of the fact that she intended to get back into bed with her partner and kiss him till they both forgot how close this call had been.
She washed her face at the sink, letting the cool water take the sting from her eyelids, and then put a long T-shirt on and padded back to the bedroom. He lay in the middle of the saggy old mattress and he wasn’t asleep.
“I’m sorry I woke you. I just—” Her throat clogged up and she cleared it. “I just needed a minute.”
“I’m sorry I scared the fuck out of you, Aurora Rae. I’m sorry I brought you here, put you in danger.”
She shook her head. “It was my choice to be here. None of this is on you.” Knowing what she did now, would she do it again? No, not if it meant one busted knuckle on Zeke. She held up the jar of arnica. “Will you let me rub this on you?”
He flipped the quilt back to bare his chest. “I will let you do anything you want to me.”
The comment made her stop moving. He’d said things like that before. She’d never understood he was serious. Had treated his devotion as a joke to avoid dealing with it and he’d played along. The wrongness of that almost made the tears flow again.
“Ah, shit, Rory. I didn’t mean to upset you.” He sat, hands pulling at his hair.
His eye socket was a deeper shade of purple, the cut on his brow was angry and the gouges on his chest were a painful reminder the drugs had made him hurt himself.
“You have nothing to be sorry for.” She started for him again, stopped at the foot of the bed and climbed on, lifting the quilt to see his feet. “But I owe you an apology. I’ve treated you so unfairly for such a long time.” She focused on the torn skin under his toes and insteps because she was too much of a coward to look in his eyes. “I don’t even know where to start saying I’m sorry for that.”
“Loving you wasn’t ever a burden to me. All I wanted was for you to be happy. You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
She had to bite down on her back teeth not to start bawling again. “Even when I danced around how you felt, knowing you were halfway in love with me and too greedy about keeping you in my life to shut you down?” A definition of unforgivable right there.
“I had no choice. It just was, Aurora Rae. I have loved you for better or worse since I can remember. Loving you is a part of who I am.”
For that he’d gotten scraps of her and she’d gotten only the parts of him that were safe to show. Right this minute she’d never hated herself more. She’d have cried out but her lungs were squeezed too tight by emotion to function. There wasn’t going to be anymore worse between them. She’d make that true.
She pushed him back to the bed. “I don’t know if I deserve you. I don’t know why I didn’t see you clearly, but I do now. I’m in love with you and I’m going to keep telling you, so you never doubt it.”
“Do you think you could seal that with a kiss?” he said, pointing to his lips.
If she kissed him now, she’d definitely be in floods of tears again because it would feel too much like forgiveness and she wasn’t ready for that.
“I’ll work up to it.” She put her fingers on his foot, and at the first tentative swipe of the gel he flinched.
“Tickles,” he said, putting his hand over his face as if he wanted to hide.
That was the moment she discovered that for everything she knew about him; his devotion, his humor, his ability to make her happy just by being in her life, he was still a mysterious stranger and she had so much to learn about loving him without limits.
He looked at her through his fingers. “I don’t know if I can take you touching my feet.”
An echo of what she’d said when he’d had his fingers inside her and she’d wanted to pass out from the thrill. He’d gone still, even as he had to have wondered that her words didn’t match her body’s reaction. He’d still checked himself. He had always put her needs in front of his.
“I don’t know if I can take you being in pain.”
He made a growly sound. “At least you can lose the shirt and let me look at you.”
She pretended to be shocked by the ask, making him grin, letting the humor provide them both ease. She saw to his feet, working quickly so as not to irritate him, moving on to the burns at his ankles and then the bruising on his shins. That was the point she had to lift the quilt aside to get to his thighs and hips.