Page 55

Small. Still counts.

Chapter eight

Colt

The base layer gets halfway over my head before the shoulder decides we’re done negotiating.

Wet fabric locks across my face. My right elbow is overhead, the joint sitting in the exact strip of range I’ve spent two years keeping it out of.

I try to back out of it.

Nothing moves.

I pull once more and the pain bites under the front of the shoulder.

“Do not pull.”

Her voice, from the corridor.

“Excellent timing.”

“Mr. Riley. Stop.”

I stop.

A drawer opens. Metal clicks.

“I am going to cut it off.”

“I was hoping you had a plan.”

“I had a plan before you made it worse.”

“Good to know I’m contributing.”

Then her hand goes flat against my stomach.

Every joke I own leaves the building.

I can’t see her. That’s the part nobody warned me about. I’ve spent my whole life reading faces half a second before they decide anything, and there’s a wet shirt across my eyes and all I have is a palm spread just under my ribs and the fact that it’s not moving.

“Breathe out.”

I do.

Her hand goes with it. Settles lower.

She waits until my ribs stop, then slides two fingers under the fabric so the shears never touch skin. Her knuckles drag along the bone. She has to come in close to see past the shirt, and I feel her hair against my jaw and the warmth of her mouth somewhere near my shoulder, and there’s a half second where her breath stops and then starts again in a different rhythm.

She’s standing between my arms.

Neither of us says anything about that.

And my body, which has been nothing but a problem to me, picks this exact moment to remember what else it’s for.

Outstanding.

There’s a woman with surgical shears an inch off my ribs, I can’t see, I can’t put my arms down, and I’m standing in my own place of work getting hard about a medical procedure.