Drawing a calming breath, I refocus on Rick, a deep, almost foreboding rumble of thunder sounding loud nearby, low echoes vibrating through the sky in its aftermath. Rick disconnects his call and I glance upward, a drop of icy rain plopping onto my nose. It’s then, that the prickling sensation explodes into a warning. I try to turn but someone grabs me from behind. I reach for the powerful arm now shackling my waist, and the flashlight crashes to the ground. I think I call out. I’m not sure I do. My heart is racing, my adrenaline pumping too hard and fast. That’s when the cold steel blade presses to the delicate skin of my neck and I go still. Instantly, I know, I just know who my captor is, without ever seeing his face. This is Wes, and Rick killed his wife, by slicing her throat. He’s going to slice my throat, poetic justice, no doubt, in his mind. Rick straightens, turning toward us, his face chiseled in stone, but he’s not looking at me. He’s looking behind me at Wes and that blade he’d been using to dig is in his hand. I open my mouth to tell him I love him but I never get the chance. Suddenly his hand moves, and there’s a flash of steel. I barely know what’s happened, that he’s thrown the knife when Wes’s grip falls away, and I stumble forward onto my hands and knees. Heart thundering against my breastbone, still on the grass, I rotate to watch Rick straddle him, and shove the blade into his body.
I wake to a gasp, sitting up and clutching the sheet to my chest, adrenaline surging through me as if I was back at the graveyard. Rick is immediately sitting beside me, his strong arms wrapping my body. “Easy, baby. Easy. It was a nightmare.”
Struggling to control my breathing I twist to face him. “You didn’t even hesitate to throw that knife.”
His lashes lower, and he looks skyward before his eyes meet mine. “If I had you’d be dead instead of him.”
I rotate to face him, still chilled from the nightmare, still sheltering under the blanket. “I know that. I do. Do you know that right before Wes showed up, you were digging, and I was mesmerized by your hands? And you know what I thought?” I don’t give him time to reply. “I thought that your true power, that magic that makes you bigger than life, is your ability to give and take lives. And yet, Rick, you choose to save them over and over. That’s what happened last night. You took a life and you saved mine.”
“Don’t make me a hero, baby. That sets us both up for failure.”
“I need you to know that I see you, all of you. I see you, Rick. Really see you. I can handle the truth, whatever it is. I’m in this thing called ‘life’ with you. And I can handle what happened to me and us last night. I can handle how you kill because I know you don’t do it for sport. Trust me.”
“Baby—”
My hand goes to his cheek, the rasp of his two-day beard rough on my fingers. “Trust me.”
“I thought we had this conversation last night?”
“But we didn’t really have it, now did we? We didn’t go deep. We didn’t get past barriers. Do you know what I dreamed of last night?”
His brow furrows. “That—I killed Wes.”
“I dreamt that you saved me, Rick. Stop seeing everything through cracked lenses. And don’t tell me I see you through rose-colored glasses. You can kill but you are not a killer. Those are two different things.”
He inhales sharply and then to my shock, he throws away the blanket and stands up, straightening to his towering six foot five inches, his hard, naked body, knotted and tense. Without another word, he walks into the bathroom, but he doesn’t shut the door. The shower comes on and I have a flashback to another night, when his first patient had died on the table, with no fault of his. He’d gone to a hot shower and some part of me had felt it was to wash away the tears he didn’t feel he could afford, emotions he felt were dangerous in an operating room.
I give him a few minutes, as I did then, five, but not quite ten. Then and only then, I stand up and walk into the bathroom to find him just as I had that night, sitting on the floor of the shower. I don’t even hesitate. I walk to the shower, open the door, and step inside. His head is back against the wall, his eyes shut, and he doesn’t look at me. I go down to the floor with him, slide between his legs, my hands on his knees.