Page 8 of About Yesterday (Foothills #5)

Carefully, he sifted through the now-disorganized mess of a sewing kit and took out a pair of small sewing scissors with narrow, sharp tips.

Trace stepped back and tilted a look, curious as he studied the wound, rotating his torso and looking comically inept but determined to not ask for help.

“Cole?” she asked again.

“Yeah?” he asked, looking up and already laughing at himself the moment he realized she was mocking him.

“Can I help?”

A laugh rattled his Adam’s apple as he tipped his head back and muttered helplessly, “Yes, please.”

“Want to sit down?” she asked, nodding out to the upstairs living area.

He set the scissors down and braced a hand on the high worktable, calculating his grip, then rose on his good leg to his toes, and slid his butt onto the table. He scooted back and held out the scissors. “This work for you?”

She moved in next to him and angled to look closer at the wound. The sutures were tiny, at least a dozen of them. She reached across the table and slid the lamp over, flicking it on and illuminating his side.

Red around the edges, a little scabbing, but it otherwise looked okay.

“Itchy?” she asked.

“Fuck, yes,” he growled, reaching over and rubbing the tips of his fingers over part of it, as if the very mention of it had set it off again.

She shifted his hand away and glared up at him.

He shrugged sheepishly and angled his body so she could see better.

Leaned forward, elbows on the table, butt sticking out, she got closer. “Hang on,” she said, rising and stepping back.

“What?” he asked, looking suddenly a little desperate as he sat alone on the tall table, bright light shining on his wound, his bare feet dangling.

“I need tweezers.” The first time she’d removed sutures had been in this very room. It had been his hand, after he’d rescued her during a bungled attempt to sneak back into the house after a late-night adventure.

She dashed into the bathroom and grabbed her tweezers from the drawer, scrubbed her hands, and found him lightly scratching the edge of the wound with his fingertips.

After she brushed his hand out of her way, eliciting a teasing laugh, she snuck a look up at him. One side of his mouth was curled up, baiting her.

Trace blushed, quickly rolling her eyes before he thought that she thought that he was flirting.

In the bright light from the lamp, she saw a handful of healed scars all over his torso.

Stepping close, she traced the line of one that ran down his forearm, lightly with her fingertips, even though she knew it had healed long enough ago it wouldn’t bother him still. “How’d you get this one?”

“Knife,” he muttered.

Shifting, she traced one over his chest. “This one?”

“Glass.”

Fingertips drifting lower, she felt another, older, at the side of his low abdomen. “This one?”

“Bullet burn.”

He lifted his hand and trailed his fingertips along an old scar above her eyebrow. “What about this one?” he whispered.

She looked up and realized he wasn’t looking at the scar, anymore, but his gray gaze drifted to her mouth. He bit the edge of his bottom lip.

Her heart tripped over itself and lodged in her throat.

Oh. He had been flirting.

She wasn’t even wearing her kissable lip gloss.

“I, um, had an eyebrow ring for a while,” she said, hoping sound came out. The eyebrow ring had been a lesson in standing out. Compliments from many. Pretend support from her parents. Surprise by most.

“I bet you looked fucking hot,” he murmured, still watching her lips. “Why did you take it out?”

While he seemed to be mesmerized by her lips, she couldn’t seem to tear herself away from his eyes. “I had to for my student teaching rotations.” Blinking, she moved back to the wound of the hour. “You should find a new line of work,” she said as she steadied her hand and aimed for the first knot.

“Agreed,” he said in a low, short clip.

“So you really quit, like, said ‘fuck off, I quit,’ and came back to the quietest little town where you’ll be bored out of your mind within a month?”

Instantly stiffening, he gritted his jaw. “Like, I called from the hospital and said to pay me my fucking last check, I’ll send over my hospital bills, and I expect double the bonus for finishing the job while I was getting the shit beat of me, and they’ll never see me again.”

Trace stilled at his words. “Oh,” she murmured. Keeping at her work, she snipped the next knot and drew it out from his skin, then set it on the base of the lamp next to the other. “I guess I thought you worked in security.”

“I did, sort of.”

“Oh. What sort of security? I mean, I thought that meant bodyguard .”

“Sometimes. Depended on the job.”

“So, sometimes it meant—”

“Trace. Please. I can’t talk about most of it, and I don’t want to talk about any of it. Since you’re… helping, I thought you at least deserved to know that I’m home to stay, and that I came back even more messed up than when I left. But I’m not going anywhere. Ever again. I’m done with all that.”

She bit her lips together, holding back the flood behind her eyes, filling her sinuses until her head felt heavy. “I’m glad you came home,” she whispered, wishing she could believe him.

F uck. Shouldn’t have said anything. But, as he’d said, she deserved to know some of it.

Her hand wavered as she lowered to the next stitch, but she didn’t stop.

“Trace. Please don’t say anything to your parents.”

“Okay,” she said softly.

“They won’t understand. I did some pretty awful things.”

She didn’t need to respond. They both knew it. Ellen and Jeremy were about as salt of the earth as it gets, and he couldn’t bear to break their hearts again.

Under his ribs, his lungs ached, his heart fucking throbbed, just imagining what they’d say if they knew what he’d done with his life.

That he knew how to survive torture because he knew how to dish it.

There was a massive part of him that wanted to tell her all the awful things he’d done.

That the shit his mom had done for drugs didn’t come close to what he’d done for money.

A voice echoed up the stairs, drawing nearer. “Trace? Are you ready?”

The ache under his ribs clenched and released as her date neared.

Now at least he knew why she was so uncomfortable and unenthused about him naked.

Not that he expected her to swoon over his naked body, but she’d been awfully calm, while his mind went straight to the gutter and refused to leave.

A few minutes ago, he’d thought she might actually be flirting with him, but…

“In here,” Trace answered, not looking up from her task.

…Apparently not. Pretty as hell, her date was decked out in a similar black dress, hers with a cutout in the back and a cutout above the belly button, and instead of the over the knee boots and bare thigh exposed thanks to a slit like Trace had on, the date had sheer tights and heeled ankle boots. Not even close to the rack Trace had.

Not that he just thought about her lovely breasts as a rack. He bit down hard on his cheek as he realized his imagination was running off again. At least he was wearing pants this time.

Still focused on his sutures, glaring at a stubborn one that was embedded and itched like crazy, Trace said, “Cole, this is Haley, my date. Haley, Cole, I’ll explain him at dinner.”

He huffed a laugh, earning a glare from Trace when the suture she’d worked so hard to isolate slipped from her hand. “Sorry,” he whispered, grinning as she moved to try again.

Weirdest damn emotions pummeled at him, a bizarre tangle that he didn’t have to worry about tamping down any flirting, because it was never going to happen and they could just be friends. Not that they couldn’t be friends. They’d always been friends. But, yeah.

Cole looked up and saw Haley was watching curiously from the doorway. “I can wait downstairs,” she said, drawing out the words as if waiting for some sort of explanation from Trace.

“You’re fine here. I’m almost done,” Trace answered, her voice muffled by her narrow focus on his sutures.

“So. Cole. Are you… in town visiting?” Haley asked, voice lilting up at the end, a bit of laugh masked in there.

“Not exactly,” he answered. He glanced down at Trace and whispered loud enough for her date to hear, “How are you planning to explain me?”

Trace cussed under her breath as a stubby end of a stitch slipped from her tweezers. She reached into the toolbox and pulled out a seam ripper, rubbed some rubbing alcohol on it, then dug in deeper.

He hissed but stayed still.

“Sorry,” she muttered. “This little bugger isn’t cooperating.”

“You’ve probably got reservations. We can try again later,” he said, holding as still as possible while she dug into his healing wound.

“I’m afraid it will swell over after I’ve messed with it so much.

I’m so close,” she said through gritted teeth, her focus so intense and adorable and neither a massive earthquake causing the roof to come down over them nor a volcanic eruption filling the room with ash would stop her from finishing the job.

He laughed and she glared up at him for moving again. “Sorry,” he whispered, completely unapologetically this time. “Seriously. Your date looks very confused.” He looked up at Haley and winked as she smiled curiously at him. “And hungry,” he added, tipping a reassuring nod toward Haley.

Haley laughed softly and shook her head. “I’m good. I know better than to interrupt Trace when she’s this… focused.”

“Where are you going for dinner?” he asked.

“The Italian place,” Haley answered, relaxing against the door.

“Still the best date spot in town?” A fact he had quickly learned.

For his first real date in town, he’d planned to take the girl to the fast-food joint so they could have a picnic and make out down by the river, but Jeremy had snuck him a hundred and said where to go, and to order dessert, too.

On the way out the door, Ellen had smoothed his hair and made him tuck in his shirt.