Looking down, he frowned. ‘It’s nothing. It’s just a scratch.’
‘You’re bleeding. That’s not nothing.’
There was a first aid kit on the wall next to an empty stall. A defibrillator hung beside it. As he tugged his shirt over his head, she felt a thud of shock. There was a graze along his abdomen—not deep, but ragged and oozing dark blood.
‘It looks worse than it is.’
Trying not to fall into the gap in her mind where all the bad things were buried, she cleaned the wound and applied a sterile dressing. But as she pressed the edges against his smooth golden skin, she couldn’t stop imagining what might have happened. Whatshe knew could happen. And the possibility of that seemed enormous, rising up and crashing over her, sweeping everything away.
‘What if it had hit your head?’
‘It’s okay.’
The concentrated gentleness in his voice made her hands start to shake. ‘I couldn’t see anything.’ Her heart was pounding inside her chest. ‘I couldn’t see you.’
He pulled her into his arms. ‘I know.’
Tears clogged her throat, and she pressed her hands against his chest, his shoulders, his beautiful undamaged face, needing to feel him, to check he was okay. ‘No, you don’t understand. I can always see you. Even in the dark...even with my eyes shut. Only I couldn’t then.’
He stared down at her, his eyes burning black in the dim light.
‘But I could see you.’
Everything stopped.
The wind outside paused, and the world hung motionless.
She held his gaze, and her breath, and then their mouths met blindly, greedily, urgently, and she melted into him.