Page 21 of Beneath the Mountain Sky
Willow gives her a smile, and a single tear trails down her cheek. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to thank me, hon, just get better. I’m so glad you’re home.”
Raven leans down and hugs Willow again, more gently this time, then turns and slips from the room, letting the door close behind her and leaving me alone with Willow for the first time since I pulled her from that river.
Those first few minutes flash through my head…
Before Connor and Liam heard my screams and came rushing from the woods to see what had happened…
When I had her laid out along the shore, searching her for injuries and trying to get her to wake up.
I don’t think I breathed during those moments.
I don’t think I did anything but pray.
And someone heard me…
She’s lying in this bed.
She’s here.
She’s okay.
Mostly.
But I can see that she’s really not.
Even after a year apart, I can still read her.
And she’s terrified and lost right now.
I slowly lower myself into the chair beside her bed again and take her hand in mine.
So small.
So soft.
So cold compared to my own.
I bring it to my lips and brush them across the back of it, inhaling that scent that’s all Willow that somehow still clings to her after everything that’s happened today. Sweet honey and lavender. “How are you doing?”
The tears flow down her cheeks now, over the bruise on the left, the scratch across the right, to where her bottom lip is split near the corner.
Each injury painful to even look at.
She shakes her head. “I don’t know. How should I be?”
A little strangled sob slips from her mouth, and I squeeze her hand when all I really want to do is pull her into my arms and hold her tightly.
“I’m so sorry.” I stare at our entwined fingers, including the one that should be wearing my ring. The ring she left sitting on the nightstand beside the bed we shared when she cleared out and left me and McBride Mountain behind. “I wish there was something I could do. Anything.”
Literally anything.
I would give every penny I have, my own life, to save her even one more minute of the suffering she’s going through right now. To alleviate the pain I see in her eyes. To wipe away those tears permanently.
“It’s not your fault.” She releases another sob. “I don’t think…”
Because she doesn’t know.
