Page 32 of Cowboy Mountain Man

I sit.

Alden sets a first-aid kit on the table.

Hope is beside it before he opens the lid. “I can do that.”

He looks at her, then me. “I’ll check the perimeter.”

The door closes behind him. Hope unzips the coat and drapes it over a chair. There’s dirt on one cuff of my sweatshirt. A little hay caught in her hair.

She looks at my torn sleeve. “We need this off.”

I pull the shirt over my head. Her eyes lift from my shoulder to my chest. Then back.

“Very inconvenient,” she mutters.

“What?”

“Your injury.”

I don’t believe her. She cleans the wound with careful hands. The pry bar caught me along the outside of the shoulder. More scrape than cut, but enough to bleed through the shirt.

Hope presses fresh gauze against it. “You should have told me it hurt.”

“What would that have changed?”

“I could have helped.”

“You did.”

“By hiding in your bedroom?”

“By doing what I asked so I knew where you were.”

She studies my face. “You came straight to me.”

“Yes.”

“They were getting away.”

“Yes.”

Her hand stills.

I reach up and cover it. “The camera can be replaced.”

She looks down. I wait. When she speaks, her voice is small. “I heard the glass break.”

I keep my hand over hers.

“Then you called out, and there was that awful noise.” She swallows. “I thought⁠—”

“I know.”

“No. I don’t think you do.”

Her eyes meet mine. “I thought they’d hurt you because of me.”

“They came there because they chose to.”