Page 11 of The Souls We Claim

“You’ve had a shock, and I’m guessing that beating is less than twenty-four hours old. So, I’m getting you out of this dress and into something softer and warm before we treat your face.”

He brushes my hands away as if my resistance were nothing. And yet instead of being outraged, I wish I’d thought to put on sexier underwear. They’re the thin nude-colored undies I wear under my diner uniform so it doesn’t show lines. More practical than frivolous.

“How old are the bruises back here?” he asks. His fingers gently touch my back, right where I hit the handle of the basement cupboard when Patrick shoved me last week.

“Seven, eight days maybe.” I can barely focus with the feel of this man’s hands on me. I breathe through my mouth in an attempt to hide the gasp as my dress hits the floor.

My husband would be appalled at the way I just shivered beneath another man’s touch. Not that Halo seems to notice. He slips the T-shirt over my head first. The fabric slithers down over my skin like it’s made from butter. It’s light, and worn, and soft, and smells of laundry detergent. The hem hits my thighs, the sleeves, my elbows.

But he’s right. It does feel better than the stiff dress I’d worn to the funeral.

He walks to stand in front of me and drops to his knees. It’s a struggle to resist the urge to sink my hands into his thick dark hair. The need momentarily cuts through my grief as he slips my heels off, removes my dress, and pulls a pair of yoga pants up my legs. Fingers dip inside the waistband in a purely perfunctory manner to straighten it. But the jolt of this man’s touch against my skin is almost more than my system can handle.

No one has ever taken such care of me.

Not even my parents.

It’s shockingly arousing, to the point it confuses me.

The vulnerability leaves me raw.

When he stands again, I take in his shoulders and realize this must be one of his T-shirts. “I’m working on the footwear. Come here.”

He takes my hand and leads me to the sink, where he rummages around in the cupboard until he finds what he needs. “You think you can stand to wash your makeup off?”

“It looks that bad, huh?”

“You look like roadkill,” he says unhelpfully.

“At least you’re honest.”

He slides an elastic off his wrist and intimately scoops my hair up before tying it back off my face.

There’s some liquid hand soap. Not great for my skin, but probably more effective at shifting the heavy-duty concealer I plastered on my face. I pray that the Band-Aid I applied earlier will stay put because it’s going to sting like a bitch if it comes off. Gingerly, I wash and rinse my face before repeating it to make sure everything is gone.

When I’m done, I reach for something to dry my face, but Halo reaches for my chin, tips my face to his, and dabs it dry with a paper towel. “Who did this to you?”

I flinch as he removes my Band-Aid but see there is fresh blood on it that had seeped through. “I guess my cut is open again.”

“Who?”

“It’s not what it looks like.” But even as I say the words, I know how pathetic they sound.

“Let me try and guess,” Halo says. “Could be one of three things. You got a kink that takes pain to cut through. Not judging if you do, but I’m not sensing masochist vibes from you and even if that was your thing, it rarely causes this kind of damage to someone’s face. Second, you got into a fight out in the street. Some bitch in a bar thinks you’re eyeing up her man and throws down. But given you’re probably a hundred pounds soaking wet, I figure you know you’re gonna be on the losing end of shit like that and don’t start it. And third, I’m figuring there’s a guy in your life who thinks his problems are all your fault and therefore, rather than sign up for a gym membership, he treats you like his punching bag.”

Without meaning to, I spin my wedding ring. There’s no engagement ring. He proposed without one with a promise that we’d go shopping for it together. It never happened.

Halo follows my hands, then looks up at me, one eyebrow raised.

“My husband has a temper,” I say.

“Like I said, you need to leave him.”

I’m about to tell him that’s what I’m attempting to do when the door bursts open and another biker walks in. He’s wearing a baseball cap backwards and a leather cut that matches Halo’s, but his saysSwitchon it. “What’s so urgent?” he asks.

“Need you to check her face and fix it up as best you can.”

Switch looks at Halo, then me, then Halo again. “Her face?”