Page 37 of What Remains

Unable to tolerate the silence anymore, I take a chance and ask, “You feel like getting cleaned up and changed?”

She sniffles and pulls back, her fingers sliding around from my back to my arms. “Do I have blood on me?”

“A little,” I admit. And it’s his blood. The bastard who planned to kill Wyatt right after telling him he raped his daughter. What kind of sick fu⁠—

“The other guy was going to . . . next. The one outside the door.”

My world spins. Flips. Turns all the way around.

“They were going to take turns.”

I take a second to replay her words. There’s no way I heard her right.

My entire body goes stiff when I realize she did, in fact, say that.

She flinches, burying her fingertips into my biceps. “I shouldn’t have told you.”

I’m still processing. Unable to put together a coherent sentence that doesn’t start and end with death. But he’s (no, they’re) already dead. Dammit all to hell.

“It’s just . . . now that I know those people at the hotel are alive and okay, which thank God, they are,” she continues, as I mentally purge the world of as much evil as I can over and over again, “I feel like it’s okay for me to be sad about what they almost did to me.”

And that’ll do it. Knock my ass back to the present. Because holy shit. “It was always okay for you to feel sad, mad, or whatever you want to feel.” I cup her face between my palms, needing to see her eyes. “No one should ever experience or almost experience that. Not ever.”

She’s still quiet.

Still not looking at me.

My jaw clenches even tighter. “What do you need me to do? How can I help?” I rasp. “We have at least three and a half more hours until they’re here. I think you need a medical check, but aside from tapping your knees with one of those tiny hammers to make it jerk . . . hell if I know anything.”

She loosens her grip on my arms and finally grants me her eyes. “Thank you.”

I raise my brows. “For?”

She smiles and taps her lip. “For making this happen with your tiny hammer joke.”

I wasn’t actually joking, but I’ll take it.

“I guess a shower and clean clothes works. Maybe something to eat so my stomach stops yelling at me?”

“This place should be stocked. Probably not the best food, though. Most likely some MRE-type shit.”

Hopefully Zoey can help with the shower-and-clothes part. No clue where she went, but I know she has to be feeling both pissed and guilty since this was her op.

“Let’s get you up.” I attempt to shift her off me while ignoring the pain in my back, but my legs are completely dead. “You, uh, put my ass to sleep.”

She cracks another smile. “Sorry about that.” Unhooking her legs from around me, she begins to wiggle around.

The shimmying of her ass in the general area of my crotch is about to wake up an organ that needs to stay asleep. Once she’s off me, I pound my legs with my fists, trying to get the blood flowing again.

“I really did a number on you, didn’t I?” She’s on her knees next to me, and the numbness is worth every second of seeing the dimple in her cheek as her smile reaches her eyes.

“You always do a number on me.” My voice is too damn deep. And to make it worse, I quietly let the subtext of what I said sit between us for a solid five seconds.

She sets her hand on my leg, keeping clear of where I wiped that man’s blood on my pants earlier. “Need a massage?”

“Nope,” I snap out. “Definitely don’t rub me anywhere.” Well, damn. That sounded absolutely horrible. “I’m good, promise.”

She rocks back onto her heels, letting go of me, and once again giving me a clear view of what she’s wearing. I need that jumpsuit off her ASAP. All I can think about is why it’s on her in the first place, and that’s going to send me over the edge and back to the compound to find someone still alive to murder. The only thing keeping me here is her.