Page 62 of Billionaire Lumberjack's Bargain

Not unless sheasks.

And that’s nothing more than wishful thinking from a man who is too sore and exhausted to really process what she must be thinking as she looks down at me now.

I lift my hand out of the water and run it across my face. “I’m sorry about when you got here. I shouldn’t have snapped at you like that.”

“No.” She cautiously kneels next to the tub and sits back on her feet, resting one hand across her stomach and rubbing it idly. “You shouldn’t have.” She sets her left hand on the edge of the tub and drums her fingers on the porcelain. “But I understand why you did.”

“Do you?”

She bobs her head slowly, the dark strands pulled back in a messy bun fighting the hold with the movement. “The way you live out here, the way your grandfather is, I imagine showing any amount of pain gets a certain reaction.”

I snort and drop my head back to stare at the ceiling beams again. “You have no idea. He’s very overprotective.”

“Shouldn’t he be?”

I glance at her and her raised brow.

She holds my gaze, waiting for me to say something. “Tell me what happened, Dalton.”

It isn’t a request.

Not this time, like it has been the others she asked about the scars.

Camille expects me to do it, and honestly, I don’t know why I bit her head off when she asked about it that night she first saw them.

Maybe because I’ve never talked to anyone about it.

There was never anyone to ask before, so talking about it felt wrong.

But now that she’s seen the scars and seen me like this, there really isn’t any hiding it from her anymore. Plus, I don’t know that Iwantto keep it locked up where it has been for so long.

“The car accident that killed my parents…”

Camille tenses, her eyes softening with that same look I saw there the first time she spotted the scars.

“The car was partially crushed, and I was pinned. Six broken vertebrae. I lost feeling in my legs off and on for a while.”

Her fingers wrapped around the edge of the tub tighten, and the hand rubbing her stomach stills. “Jesus…”

“I was in the hospital for months, had three surgeries, so on top of losing my mom and dad, I was dealing with that…at Davey’s age.”

She’s quiet for a moment, studying me with compassion in her blue gaze I’ve never seen from anyone else who wasn’t paid to care about me, like the doctors and nurses who put me back together—except Pops. “I am so sorry, Dalton.”

I blow out a long breath. “It was a long time ago. Almost twenty years now.”

“What about since then? Any revision surgeries or complications?”

I know her question comes from her medical training and her concern for me, but I bristle at it. She must sense it because she presses her lips together and glances at the water rather than at me.

“Two other surgeries over the years. I was so young and still growing. They had to go in and adjust some things. The last was six years ago.”

Her fingers trail over the cast iron. “An injury like that, no matter how well the surgeons piece you back together, living like this, what you do up here, it’s probably the worst possible thing for your body.”

I snort a mirthless laugh. “You think I don’t know that? That Pops doesn’t?”

It’s been a constant source of tension and disagreement between us for years.

Pops worried I’m pushing too hard.

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