“Can we stop real quick?” I ask, already popping the cover off my lens. “I want to get a few shots here.”
“Go ahead,” Paul says.
I scramble toward the edge, staying a safe distance from the drop, though it’s not significant. It’s just rocky, and the water below looks freezing.
But when I look through the viewfinder, the angle is all wrong. The pictures I took this morning weren’t my best work, but I need to get up to speed quickly so I can capitalize on the attention and followers TikTok has afforded me. I want to make more videos. Need to, actually, and I want it to be with work that shines.
Which means I need to scoot closer so I can get this shot.
Theo’s voice is sharp behind me. “What are you doing? You’re going to fall in.”
I slide an inch forward so the toe of my hiking boot rests on a rock. “I’m not. I know what I’m doing.”
“Do you? Because you’re way too close to the edge.”
I peer through the viewfinder again. Almost there. If only Theo would shut up so I could concentrate. “I know my body placement better than you, Spencer.”
I inch forward. It’s almost perfect, almost—
“Shepard, don’t—”
But it’s too late. The heel of my hiking boot slips on a wet patch of rock, and I’m falling.
Thirteen
You’re a fucking mess.”
I press my key card against the reader, my body throbbing from head to toe. “And you’re overreacting.”
Theo reaches an arm around me, pushing my hotel door open. His furious tension leaches from his chest into my back, but when he pushes past me into the room, it’s with a gentle brush of his body against mine.
Still. He’s pissed. The ride back to the hotel was deathly silent. Even Paul was quiet, beyond asking several times if I was okay.
As Theo stalks away, I focus on the mud streaking down his pants from his ass to his knee. He’s missing the bottom three inches of his shirt. We used it as a makeshift bandage, so now he’s rocking a crop top. His elbow is scratched but not bleeding, which is more than I can say for my knee.
I look down at it in dismay. It’s no longer gushing, but it looks nasty underneath the shirt. The material is soaked through with blood. And my leggings are trashed, ripped from knee to mid-thigh.
Theo holds the first aid kit he got from the front desk over his shoulder. “Take your pants off.”
“Excuse me?” I choke out, my shoulder clipping the doorway as I cross the threshold.
The look he gives me is incendiary. “We need to clean your knee and your leggings will be in the way. They’re ruined anyway. Off.”
My spine cracks, stiffening at his bossy tone, but I bite my lip against a retort as I watch him stride into the bathroom. He pushes aside all the crap I left out this morning, tossing the first aid kit onto the counter.
He has good reason to be mad; I had no business hanging off the edge of the embankment like that. What’s worse, I didn’t even get the shot and my lens is cracked, though thankfully I have a backup.
I drag myself over to my suitcase, digging around for a pair of shorts while my brain flashes through the past two hours: My foot slipping and the way I tipped forward. The horror of seeing the rocks ten feet below me with nothing to grab onto, knowing I was going to fall face-first into them. The feeling of being wrenched backward by my backpack, being thrown to the side from the force of Theo’s momentum. The searing pain in my knee when it sliced against a jagged rock and the glug of Theo’s racing heart underneath my ear when we finally stopped halfway down to the creek.
He’d gasped out, “Fucking hell. Shepard, are you okay?”
“I think so.” My knee was already wet, on fire.
There’d been a brief pause while Paul called down to us. Then Theo’s voice went sharp as a knife. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Turns out that was a rhetorical question. He ignored my breathless explanations as he got me up the hill, ripped his shirt like the Hulk version of Captain America, and bandaged up my knee. He ignored me during our hour-long ride from the park, and when Paul offered to grab water and painkillers in the gift shop downstairs.
That his first words to me in two hours are “you’re a fucking mess” and “take your pants off” is deeply ironic. I am a mess. And it’s not the first demand he’s ever made of me, but it’s the first one I’ve ever followed with such little hesitation.
I undress to the muffled sounds of Theo moving around in the bathroom. Something about it soothes me, that there’s someone in there waiting to take care of me. That he’s willing to, even after I messed up.
Maybe it’s the adrenaline finally catching up, or the pain, but tears sting my eyes as I pull on my shorts. I take two gulping breaths to push the emotion back. I don’t want to walk into that bathroom if I’m not calm. If I’m not calm, then I’m vulnerable. The thought of Theo seeing any more of my soft underbelly scares me more than falling down that embankment.
When I push the bathroom door open a minute later, though, I feel like I’m seeing his. He’s braced against the counter, head hanging low. I nearly back out to give him more time to . . . I don’t know. Collect himself.
The squeaking hinges alert him to my presence, though, and his expression straightens.
He pushes off the counter, clearing his throat, then freezes. “I—are those underwear?”
I look down, pulling at the cotton. “No, they’re shorts.”
“Says who?” he grumbles, turning back to the counter and grabbing one of the myriad packets littering one side of the sink.
“Target.”
With a deeply impatient sigh, he gestures to the cleared space on the counter. “Hop up.”
“Uh.” I look down at my mangled knee. “I’m not sure I—”
Theo’s hands are on me before I’m prepared. I don’t know how I’d prepare for this, anyway: the warmth of his skin against mine above my waistband, the way his fingers dig into my back, his thumbs pressing hard into my abdomen.
I have to wrap my arms around his neck. I’ll fall otherwise. It feels like I’m falling anyway.
He places me unceremoniously on the counter, his hands loosening but not immediately dropping from their bracketed position. His broad palms are the perfect width for the valleys of my body. I wish I could erase that knowledge from my brain.
My arms are still frozen around his neck. He reaches behind him, our faces inches apart, and grabs my wrists. He doesn’t touch me like I’m delicate or fragile. He touches me like I can take it. My stomach tightens in tandem with the squeeze of his fingers over my wrists as he sets my hands on my thighs.
“Was that necessary? I think I’ve gotten thrown around enough today,” I murmur into the silence.
He smirks. “Didn’t know there was a limit.”
Jesus. I look away, down at the spread of medical supplies. “Are you going to fix me up, McDreamy?”
“Who the hell is McDreamy?”
“He was on a show I’ve been bingeing that’s on its, like, fortieth seas—” I wave my hand in the air impatiently. “You know what, it doesn’t matter. He’s a hot television doctor.”