Page 19

Honestly, she’d forgotten about it until he’d just reminded her that it was even hurt.

The cut didn’t feel like anything at all.

Confused, she slid her hand over the back of her arm, now tucked into the gas station hoodie she’d splurged on after her last one was ruined by inconvenient bleeding.

Even putting pressure on it with her fingertips, it didn’t hurt at all. What the heck?

She pulled off her hoodie, and when her head was free of the thick material, she caught Kade’s attention on the upper shelf of her tank top. He jerked his attention to the road and looked just as surprised with himself as she felt.

Heat crept up her neck and landed in her cheeks as she readjusted her tank top. She dared another shy glance at him before she twisted her skin at her elbow so she could see the bandage better. It wasn’t bleeding through at all. She pulled the bandage out so she could see the cut, but it was completely sealed up, and looked like a silver scar under the stitches. “Oh my gosh,” she whispered.

“Is it bad?” he asked.

“No.” She met his gaze, completely shocked. “It’s healed.”

A slow smile stretched his masculine lips. “That’s a good thing.”

“Yeah.”

Can you feel him?

Her animal was here. She was confused, sure, but today, she’d been whispering to her more than any other day in as long as she could remember. If that wasn’t proof enough, the fast healing would be. It was the realization that she had some kind of connection to her animal again.

Jess caught him staring at her.

“What happened to your face?” Kade asked.

And just like that, her hopefulness faded. She made herself remarkably busy with removing the bandage. She would have to cut out the stitches. “You know what happened,” she uttered softly.

“No, I mean what happened to your scars. They’re almost gone. Did your animal do that?”

“Uuuh, nope. A surgeon did it. I’m still paying off the medical bills. I wanted to be easier to look at.”

And there were Kade’s bright blue eyes, boring into her, his dark eyebrows drawn down low. “You were always easy to look at.”

“Ha ha, very funny.”

“I’m not joking. Who told you that? Who said you were hard to look at?”

“It was said mostly with other peoples’ stares. And the horrified glances. I hate it when people ask me what happened. I wanted to just meet someone, and them not pity me, or looked grossed out.”

He nodded. “Well, just for the record, I thought your scars looked cool.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“No. You were always pretty. It wasn’t hard to cut your hand, Jess.” He gestured to her face. “It makes sense that Connor would be interested now. Let me guess—he’s on a run for rank.”

“Good guess,” she admitted honestly. “He’s preparing to Challenge for Third.”

“He’ll need to be paired up to hold that rank.”

“That was his plan.”

“You meanyouwere his plan.”

“Sound familiar?” she asked softly.

Kade didn’t look at her again for a while. He just drove and looked thoughtful as the scraggly desert trees morphed to pines. That was the thing she loved about Oregon. It held every terrain—beach, desert, piney woods, forest waterfalls, and snowy mountains. She hadn’t seen the piney woods for a while. It was beautiful outside.