Page 46 of Fall for Me

Seamus

Itook her hands, resting them in my own, palms up. Her hands felt impossibly small in mine, her skin impossibly soft. Her wounds didn’t look too bad—her hands were scratched up, but a little antiseptic and ointment would fix them up. Mine, on the other hand… I closed my eyes, willing the image of what had just happened—both a moment ago, and on the road—to go away long enough so I could focus on patching Chelsea up.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “Of course.” I should have been asking her that. But I already knew how she was—I could still feel the dampness of my shirt where she’d let out all the pain I knew she’d had coiled tight inside of her. I don’t know what I’d been thinking holding onto her like that; it just felt like the only thing in the world I could do that might be right. I knew what it felt like to have everything sparking like a live wire inside your chest.

Chelsea shifted where she sat, and I realized I’d been holding her hands in mine without doing anything.

I set her hands down in her lap and slid the first aid kit across the floor toward me. It was a big red duffel I took to job sites. Reilly and Sons valued safety as high as workmanship, and in all the years I did site work—from summers at age fifteen until I graduated college, full time in my twenties, to only a few days a month these days—we’d only had a handful of major injuries. Most had been serviceable from this bag, which I always kept well-stocked.

“It’s just your hands?”

Chelsea shook her head, her eyes going to her knees.

Her pants—silky black, loose things with flowers on them that I’d thought at first was a skirt—were ripped on one knee. I hadn’t noticed earlier because of the dark color of the fabric, but both knees were damp with blood, staining the paler flowers red.

She gasped as she took in the torn fabric. “I love these pants!” Then she groaned and flopped back against the couch, bringing her hands to her face, then remembering the injuries there, grit her teeth, and laid them back down. “I’m supposed to be taking it easy. Trying to sort out my next steps, not hurting myself even more. Do you ever feel like bad luck just sticks to you?”

A normal person would have said something encouraging. It just feels that way. Things’ll look up soon. But who the hell was I to say anything about that? I felt the same way.

Of course she happened to be on my street when she nearly got hit by that car. It was like I was fucking cursed. Tainted. I’d thought things had been going better—the dinner, the easy rhythm we slipped into. The possibility of friendship.

But I’d been lying to myself. I’d been disarmed by Chelsea. By the way she showed me exactly what she was thinking. By how she found joy in things like chasing chickens and eating a meal she loved. By how she’d listened to my stories about Kevin and New York without wanting to brush it off and move on to something simpler.

But of course I didn’t say that. All I said was, “Yes.”

She smiled, though there was no humor in it. Just a mutual understanding. I liked how she didn’t press for more. I remembered how much I liked that about her.

“Mind if I take a look?” I asked, indicating her knees.

She nodded, and I grasped the bottom of the pants. I could see why she liked them—they looked beautiful on her. But hell, a burlap sack would look beautiful on her. And she was right. They were probably ruined; the rip was bigger than I’d thought.

I pulled the wide legs over her knees, exposing her legs. A jolt of heat shot through me as I took in the soft, newly exposed flesh of her calves. She was wearing these lace-up black boots that were somehow both clunky and delicate. Then I squinted at her socks, which were sticking up an inch above her boots.

I couldn’t help grinning.

“Pizza, socks?” I asked.

Chelsea blinked, then followed my gaze to her socks. Then she surprised me by smiling, bright and easy. “I forgot I wore those.” Her grin went wider, and I felt the air leave me.

She was so fucking gorgeous. There was one window in here, and as she leaned forward it cast soft, barely-autumn light across her face and hair, which fell in a soft, caramel curve against her cheek like it had the other night in my kitchen. She still had the stains of bruises under her skin, and that bandage across her face, but those were a part of her, and all of her was beautiful.

After Chelsea had left my place, I’d had to give myself a talking-to for immediately ignoring the promise I’d made to her brother to look out for her. I hadn’t looked out for her. I’d wanted her to stay. I’d wanted to do things to her. When the words didn’t work, I’d stripped down and gotten into the shower, where I’d forced myself to jam the faucet all the way cold. I thought that had done the trick—the breath was knocked out of me—and after a few minutes, I’d turned it back to warm. But as that water sluiced over me, bringing my temperature back up, All I could do as I scrubbed myself with soap was replay images of Chelsea. Chelsea, lying in my hammock, her arm thrown up over her head, as if she were in bed. Chelsea, moaning as she’d eaten that burger, her tongue flicking out to catch a crumb. Her body, soft and pert next to me at the sink. Before I knew what was happening, my soaped-up hand had dropped between my legs and I was stroking my cock, hard at the memory of her body. I’d finished, leaning up against the wet tile, thinking very un-protective thoughts about Chelsea Kelly.

The woman looking at me now. The woman whose thighs I was brushing with my fingers as I tucked the fabric of her pants under her legs and out of the way.

“Everybody likes pizza,” Chelsea said.

I pictured her eating a slice, licking her lips, moaning…

My dick twitched.

Jesus.

I pulled my hands away from her, reaching for the antiseptic tucked into the top of the kit.

“Everybody?” I asked, trying to distract myself. Willing my cock to behave itself.

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