Huntsman by Cambria Hebert
18
Virginia
“What are you doing here?”I wondered, hoping the reluctance I felt to pull away did not show on my face.
He cleared his throat, shifting to reach into his pocket. “You left this in my car.”
One of the small daisies I pinned in my braids yesterday lay in his palm.
“Oh. Thank you,” I said, taking the flower. “You didn’t have to bring it all the way here.”
Snort flopped down in my lap, nudging my belly with his nose. I laughed, not feeling his weight on my legs but being tickled by his breath.
“Snort,” Earth grumped. “Move. You’re heavy.” He started to push the dog away, but I stopped him, wrapping an arm around the bulldog. “He’s fine! Let him be.”
He made a face like he smelled something rotten, and I smiled. “Good boy,” I told the dog, patting his head.
“You wanna get out of here?”
The unexpected words made my head pop up. “Me?”
Earth nodded, dark hair falling into his eyes. His open jacket revealed a faded black T-shirt with a beer label across the front. The label featured a rotting apple, so I knew it was likely the beer that he served at his bar.
A bar I’d never been to.
Neo said I was too good for it.
“Where to?” I asked.
“Does it matter?” he countered.
I pursed my lips. “Can Snort come?”
“He’s driving.”
“You let your dog drive but not me?” I demanded.
His lips twitched, opaque eyes glimmering with mischief. “He’s a better driver than you.”
Unable to help it, I laughed. It was a complete contrast to the grainy feeling crying had left in my eyes. “I’m insulted, but I also can’t pass up the chance to get out of here for a while.”
Earth pushed up off the bed, gazing around. “Get your stuff.”
“My stuff?”
He blanched. “Don’t girls need like a bunch of stuff?”
“Did I need a bunch of stuff yesterday when we went to the hospital?”
“No. But look how that turned out.” He glowered.
I flushed a little, remembering the little bathroom emergency.
“Do you have a backpack?” He still gazed around my room.
He was serious.
“Are you planning to, like, keep me out all night?”
“No. I have to work tonight.”
“Everything I need is in the back pocket of my chair,” I said, pointing to the black pouch that hung off the wheelchair.
“Backpack,” he repeated. He was stubborn and unrelenting. Bossy.
“There.” I pointed, giving in.
He glanced where I pointed, then back at me, clearly unamused.
“What?” My voice was innocent as I batted my eyes. “That’s what I have.”
“It’s purple.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Does it clash with your black-leather, bad-boy vibe you love so much?”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, he sighed dramatically, and my lips rolled in on each other. “I told you everything is in the pouch. I don’t need a bag.”
Scowling, he grabbed the purple backpack and opened it up. “Put it all in here. Add extra.”
“Extra?”
“I’m a man of little patience, sprite.”
How rude. “I already said I didn’t need a bag.”
“And I am not taking you out of here and having a repeat of yesterday. I like to be prepared at all times. Your well-being is my responsibility.”
I took the bag. He pushed the wheelchair close enough for me to transfer the items out of the pouch. Then I transferred myself into the chair and went through the room, adding a few other things I probably didn’t need, but he seemed much calmer the more I tossed into the bag.
“Acting like I’m a baby and need a diaper bag,” I muttered as I wheeled out of the bathroom, bag in my lap.
A big black boot came out, jamming against one of the wheels on my chair, stopping my forward progress.
I scowled, but he seemed completely unbothered, squatting in front of me, placing a hand over my knee.
I stared at his hand, feeling insanely robbed. He was touching me, and I couldn’t feel it. The warmth of his palm, the tingle of nerves he always ignited. I could see that his hand engulfed my knee, but I couldn’t feel that protective sensation. I couldn’t revel in it.
Instead, I felt like an outsider in my own body. Seeing but not experiencing.
You know, on most days, I accepted my condition. I’d learned to live with it and see it as just who I was. But in this moment? In this moment, who I was just wasn’t good enough.
“I know you aren’t a baby. Having stuff you might need, it makes me feel better. I…” His throat worked, and this almost pained expression shone in his surprisingly earnest stare. “I care.”
Suddenly, it didn’t matter I couldn’t feel that hand on my knee because those two simple words that seemed so difficult for him to say made me feel ten times more than that one touch could.
He cares.My stomach dipped, heart fluttered, and breath quickened. “I feel that,” I whispered.
Brow furrowing, his almond-shaped eyes wrinkled at the corners. “What?”
I didn’t realize I spoke out loud, but I wouldn’t take it back. His admission seemed to cost him something, so it didn’t seem like much to spend a little on my end too.
“I can’t feel your touch,” I said, gesturing to where his hand still covered my knee. “But what you just said, I felt that.”
He drew his hand back, and even though I felt nothing, it still disappointed me. I guess just knowing he touched me was better than nothing at all.
He surprised me, though. Instead of dropping his hand, he pushed it between me and the arm of the wheelchair to grasp around my elbow. “Better?” he whispered.
His hands were warm, skin slightly rough against mine. My arm was even smaller than my knee, so his palm engulfed it completely. The pad of his thumb moved lazily, caressing the inside of my arm. Those tingles of awareness I could only long for moments ago rushed over me, prickling my skin with goose bumps and creating a light shiver.
People had no idea the kind of deprivation that came with the inability to feel the sensation of touch. To understand without words what someone wanted to say. To be unable to interpret the physical vibes that could often be transmitted through the skin.
My eyes fluttered closed as his thumb continued to lazily stroke. His words were gruff and impatient, his tone bossy and rude.
But his touch… Oh, his touch. It whispered I was precious and how unbearable it would be for him to see me in any kind of distress. It asked for understanding and maybe even a hint of forgiveness.
“Better,” I whispered back.
“When did you sneak in here?” Emogen’s voice seemed so loud from the doorway, her sudden presence startling me like the popping of a balloon.
Earth’s hold on my arm tightened a bit with my startle, but then he stood smoothly, releasing me to look at my nurse and friend. “I didn’t sneak. I walked past the front desk.”
“Two days in a row, that’s more than we’ve seen of you this whole year,” she commented, coming farther into the room. Her eyes glanced at the bag in my lap, then back at Earth. “To what do we owe this pleasure?”
“I’m going out with Earth this afternoon!” I exclaimed.
There was a short but poignant pause. Emogen glanced at me with gleeful eyes.
I gasped. “Not like a date!” I hurried to say, feeling completely ridiculous and knowing my face was beet red. “I just meant, like, out.”
“Mm-hmm,” Emogen practically sang.
“You got a problem with that?” Earth quipped, tilting his head at the curly-haired woman.
“As a matter of fact, I do.”
“I’m not a prisoner here.” Even though it feels like it. “I’m allowed to come and go as I please.” I was twenty-one years old, for crying out loud. An adult.
“You have PT at two.” Emogen reminded me.
I cringed, feeling Earth’s stare and single raised eyebrow.
“I forgot,” I told him. Turning to Emogen, I said, “I haven’t missed a single appointment in seven years. Can’t you cover for me just this once?”
Her red-painted lips pursed.
“Pleeeaase?” I asked, folding my hands in front of me like a beggar.
“This have anything to do with that argument I heard between you and Neo?” Leave it to Emogen to cut right to it.
“How is that your business?” Earth barked, clearly offended she would talk to me like that.
“She’s my friend!” I declared.
He made a rude noise.
“You heard that?” I asked her, ignoring him.
“Half the floor heard it.”
I grimaced.
“Relax.” She went on. “We couldn’t hear what you were saying, just that your voices were raised, and then Neo stormed out with a black cloud over his head.”
“Sounds like Neo,” Earth muttered.
Emogen turned chestnut eyes to me, waiting for an answer to her previous question.
I sighed. “Can’t I just get out for a little while?”
Appraising my face, which likely still had red-rimmed, puffy eyes, she debated, then sighed. “Fine. I can move PT to six. But you have to be back in time.”
I glanced at Earth. He nodded.
With a light squeal, I clapped. Snort leaped off the bed and put his two front paws on my lap.
“You know he’s not allowed in here,” Emogen said.
“We were just leaving.” I promised, scratching behind his ear.
Earth reached into my lap, grabbing the bag to zip it closed and sling it over his shoulder.
“That purple really brings out your eyes,” Emogen noted.
He glowered as I giggled endlessly.
“I’m leaving. You better hurry up. I won’t wait.” He went without looking back, the purple bag still resting against his shoulder.
Snort started to run after but stopped to look back at me.
“Let’s go, boy,” I said, pushing the chair forward.
Emogen stood watching the three of us parade out the door. “Where are you going?”
“I have no idea,” I called back, some of my hair floating around me as I moved forward.
“And what if Neo calls?”
I paused at the door, heaviness weighing on my heart. “He won’t call,” I told her. “At least not today.”
“You gonna tell me what went down between you two?”
I swallowed. “Later.”
She made a sound. “All right. Get out of here. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
That made me laugh because Emogen wasn’t the type to back down from anything.
The hallway was already empty when I wheeled down the corridor. I started to worry that Earth really wouldn’t wait for me and that my chance to be free for a little while was lost.
But then I rounded the nurses’ station and saw him standing in the middle of the open elevator, arm thrown against the doors to keep them from closing.
Snort was already sitting inside, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth, the sound of his heavy breathing echoing in the enclosed space. The second Earth saw me, he scowled.
“You waited!” I said brightly, trying to hurry forward.
“Snort wouldn’t get in the elevator until he heard you coming.” He shifted back to let me wheel in.
The second I did, Snort had his front paws in my lap again.
“Were you waiting for me?” I cooed. “Who’s a good boy?” Snort’s fat tongue licked up the side of my cheek, and I squealed.
Earth huffed in irritation, stepping back so the doors could close.
Still patting Snort, I lifted my face. “Earth?”
He grunted, refusing to look at me.
“That purple really does bring out your eyes.”
His lips twitched, then again. In the reflection of the elevator door, I was pretty sure I saw him smile.