Page 37 of Broken Breath (Rogue Riders Duet #1)

Scars stretch across her skin, thin and pale against the sheen of sweat. Some are long, others jagged. I knew they were there, but seeing them now, written across her back and ribs like battle lines, hits me like a sucker punch to the gut.

I try to marry the scars against the footage seared into my brain, and it dawns on me that I didn’t understand what surviving meant until this moment, until I saw it carved into her.

That is not the body of a kid. It’s the body of a warrior.

God, how hard must that have been for her?

Sweat drips down her neck, following the slope of her shoulder, and as much as I miss tugging her braid to get a rise out of her, the short hair suits her, suits who she is now.

I take a step toward her, and her eyes flick up to my reflection in the mirror.

“Fuck.” She jerks around and drops the barbell onto the rack with a loud clunk.

My eyes are glued to the scar running over her hipbone as I step even closer and reach for her on instinct.

My hand settles on her waist, and when she doesn’t pull away, I let my thumb brush the edge of the scar.

She shudders under my touch, and my heart races.

I can feel her staring at me, but I keep my eyes on her jagged skin, keep my fingers moving, tracing. Mapping.

“I didn’t know it was that bad,” I murmur, my voice caught somewhere between apology and awe. “Not really.”

She huffs, the sound more exhaustion than sarcasm. “How would you? Nobody told you.”

“Tell me, then.” My gaze flicks up to hers, but I can’t seem to stop my fingers from tracing her skin.

“I’ve been feeling guiltier every damn day since you two came back.

I told myself for years that maybe it wasn’t as serious as everyone made it out to be.

That maybe it hurt less because you were always so goddamn tough. ”

But I can see now it did hurt, that it still does. And now that I’ve laid my hands on proof of everything she’s been holding together, I don’t know how to hold my own body upright.

“Tell me how wrong I was for not pushing more,” I add.

For not showing up, demanding to know. For being the coward who let time and distance make it convenient to forget.

“I think I needed to see this to understand what you and Dane went through without me.” My thumb brushes another one of the scars, lower this time, then I meet her eyes again. “Show me the truth of it.”

She searches my face, probably weighing whether I deserve to know, then she wordlessly reaches out and takes my wrist, guiding my hand upward, letting my fingertips ghost along the edge of her ribs.

“Compound fracture,” she murmurs. “It snapped through the muscle. Took two surgeries to piece it back together.”

Jesus. I blink hard, but my hand doesn’t falter as she guides it up her ribs. Her skin is soft under my calloused fingertips, too soft for the damage it hides.

“Three cracked ribs. And my scapula… that was a mess. Still locks sometimes when I’m cold.”

She guides my hand to her left hip bone, where I feel the hard ridge of surgical metal just under the surface.

“Shattered hip. Took a rod and three plates to put me back together. Still hurts like a bitch, every damn day.”

God, I want to take some of that pain from her so she can breathe.

She draws my touch across the side of her lower back, just above her waistband, where a small, twisted scar curves beneath the skin. I wouldn’t have noticed it on my own, not with the others drawing my eye. But now, touching it, I can feel how deep it runs.

“Left kidney. Took too much damage from the impact… from the bleeding. They couldn’t save it.”

She breathes out shakily as my hand rests there, her body trembling. “There was… a lot of bleeding in the abdomen. They thought it was just the organ damage at first, but…” she shakes her head, “… let’s just say I’m a mess.”

I want to tell her she’s not. That she’s more put together than most people I know, for sure more than I am, but my throat is too tight for words. So I let my touch speak for me, fingers reverent, tracing her pain like it’s poetry.

She lifts my hand upward until my fingers slide beneath the edge of her sports bra, making her gasp. Fuck, that sound. I keep my touch gentle, skimming along the warm slope of her ribcage while my eyes flick up to hers.

Her beautiful molten caramel eyes.

Alaina is staring at me, and her pulse is hammering under her skin just as fast as mine is. My fingertips settle there, against the raised edge of the scar, but my palm flattens around the warm, smooth skin surrounding it.

My eyes drag from hers to her parted lips, then back again, and for a moment, we just breathe together.

“My lung was punctured. Collapsed,” she pants out finally. “I couldn’t breathe. There was a tube down my throat for days.”

Nodding slightly, I watch my hand rise and fall with her breaths, the ones she can take now.

Goose bumps ripple across her skin, and fuck, her nipples are pebbled under the thin fabric of her sports bra, tight and aching just like the heat pulsing low in my gut.

We’re in sync with every breath, every rushing heartbeat, and it wrecks me.

Not only because she’s beautiful and standing half-bare in front of me, letting me touch her, but because I wasn’t there. Because she went through hell alone.

But I’m here now.

And I will never look away again, not even if it kills me.

My hand shifts instinctively, splaying wider across the edge of the scar, and my thumb brushes the swell of her breast because my hand wants to feel all of her, even the pieces that still tremble. Her breath stutters, then breaks entirely into a small, startled hiccup.

“I didn’t know it was this bad.” The words fall out of me, rough with guilt. “Fuck… I didn’t know.”

She should hate me for it, for not being there for her, for not trying harder, but she’s still here, right under my hands, letting me in anyway.

My face hovers just above hers, so close I can feel the heat radiating off her skin. I lower my lips, pressing them to the soft curve of her cheek. “Fuck, baby girl, I’m sorry.”

I mean it to stop there. To be just that, a moment of being close enough to say everything I can’t put into words. But she turns and slides her hand behind my neck, buries her fingers in my hair, and she kisses me.

Not tentatively.

Desperately .

She presses her mouth to mine like she’s been holding this in her lungs for years.

My small gasp of surprise is brief, and before I even realize what I’m doing, my hands slide up along her sides until they find her face.

Cupping her jaw with both hands, my fingers brush through the ends of her sweat-damp hair, and my thumbs graze the edge of her cheeks, wiping away her leftover tears like she’s something delicate, even though I know she’s not.

I return her kiss without hesitation, pouring everything I didn’t know I’d been carrying into it. Every moment I missed. Every second I failed her. Every scream I didn’t get to hear. Every broken breath I didn’t hold for her.

My hand skims down her throat, and when I find the pulse point just beneath her jaw, a gasp escapes her as I press my thumb there. It’s proof that she’s real, that she’s here, that this is happening.

I press closer, like maybe if I hold her tight enough, I can go back in time and stand by her side through all of it. She leans into me, her mouth parting under mine, one hand still tangled in the back of my hair, the other curled into my hoodie, holding on like she’s afraid I’ll vanish.

I deepen the kiss, not to dominate, but because I need it.

Because I’ve spent the last seven years thinking about what was lost, and the last two hours terrified I’d never see her again, and right now, this moment, her mouth against mine, her body pressed flush to my chest, it’s the first time since she came back that I’m not afraid.

Because she’s not just fire and grief and scars.

She’ s warmth.

She’s want .

She’s home.

I pull back and take a deep, shuddering inhale, breathing her in. She still smells like her. That clean, sun-warmed Alaina smell, like summer rain and something unnamable that hits me in the chest like it belongs there.

And then it really hits me.

Because she’s still that Alaina, too, underneath the faint scent of sweat, massage oil, and secrets.

The girl who used to fall asleep on the team bus with her head on Dane’s shoulder and her sneakers kicked off into the aisle. The girl who carved her initials into a tree halfway up Snowshoe’s old black trail and dared me to do the same.

She’s that girl.

Dane’s sister.

My best friend’s little sister.

Fuck.

I jerk my hands from her skin like they’ve been scorched and pull back, too fast, and probably too roughly. She stumbles, her eyes wide and her hand still half-curled around my hoodie, not understanding what just happened.

“I…” My voice breaks. I can’t even look at her fully. “ I can’t. ”

Her chest is rising and falling rapidly as she lets go of me, like she’s struggling to get enough air.

“That was…” I shake my head, eyes burning. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

Accusation is blurred behind the tears in her eyes, and I can read it perfectly. She knew . She knew I’d ruin it, and she kissed me anyway.

Fuck .

“I’m sorry,” I manage, even though it’s not enough, not even close. “That was a mistake.”

I turn before I do something worse, like convince myself that there’s a world where this could work, where the ten years between us, and the history and promises to Dane don’t matter.

Dane. Right. Fuck.

“Call your brother,” I say without turning around. “ Please . He’s worried.”

With that, I walk out, pushing open the door as if I can outrun everything about this. About her.

The gym door clicks shut behind me, and the full shame of what I’ve done isn’t even close to settling by the time I round the corner toward the elevator and nearly slam straight into Luc Delacroix.

He stares at me, eyes narrowing like he can read the guilt bleeding off me in waves.

“What the hell, Greer?” he asks, blinking at the wild look I know I must be wearing. “What are you sprinting from?”

He cranes his neck, looking past me down the hallway, but I just shake my head and push through the stairwell door.

It slams behind me, echoing down the concrete wall as I take the stairs two at a time.

My hand drags over my mouth like I can erase the kiss with friction, rub away the feel of her lips, but it’s useless.

The taste of her is still on my tongue.

The sound of her breath is still tangled with mine.

Fuck.

What have I done?