Page 23 of Hunted to Be Mine
I nodded and continued working, carefully avoiding the area. “Some memories are better left buried.”
“Is that your professional opinion, Doctor? Or advice as a psychiatrist?”
“No.” I tied off the final stitch. “That’s personal experience.”
We let it pass. His bare skin under my hands, the cramped room, the shared fact of old damage. We didn’t name it.
I taped a clean gauze pad over the stitches. “The cut on your arm needs cleaning, but it’s not deep enough for sutures.”
He offered his arm wordlessly, and I shifted my position to access it better. The movement brought me closer, my knee brushing his. Neither of us moved away.
“Why didn’t you run?” he asked as I cleaned the knife wound. “When the facility was attacked, you could’ve headed for an exit. Instead, you followed me deeper in.”
The question caught me off guard. “Survival instinct. With your training, I figured my chances were better with you.”
“That’s rational,” he said, “but it wasn’t what I saw in your eyes.”
“And what did you see?”
His gaze was steady, searching. “Trust. Which is either very brave or very foolish.”
“I’m still deciding which,” I admitted, applying antiseptic to the cut with a bit more force than necessary.
He didn’t wince. “And your conclusion so far?”
I finished bandaging his arm before meeting his eyes directly. “That trust and survival aren’t always at odds. Sometimes they’re the same thing.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. “An interesting theory.”
I moved back, creating some distance between us. “How’s your head? Any seizure symptoms since we left?”
“None.” He rotated his shoulder, testing my handiwork. “The episodes seem to be triggered by extremes.”
“Like what?”
He stood, moving to the sink to wash the blood from his hands. The muscles in his back flexed with the movement, highlighting more old marks across his shoulder blades.
“Impressions,” he said, “Emotions. And sometimes…” He turned, leaning against the counter. “Physical contact.”
We both remembered the first kiss and the seizure that followed.
“Yet you just let me treat your wounds without incident,” I said, capping the antiseptic.
“Different context. Different touch.” His expression gave me nothing. “Detached contact doesn’t trigger the response.”
“And what is the opposite of that?”
His gaze went flat. “It’s when the contact carries meaning beyond the physical that the conditioning fights back.”
I should’ve pushed there, but what came out was, “You hungry?”
The non sequitur seemed to amuse him. “Is that your professional assessment of my needs, Doctor?”
“It’s been a long time since either of us has eaten properly.” I turned away, busying myself with the groceries we’d purchased. “And wound healing requires adequate nutrition and fluids.”
“Then by all means,” he said. His tone was dry. “Let’s eat.”
I unwrapped protein bars and set out bottled water. It was hardly a meal, but it would keep us functioning.
