A Fiery Whisper by Tamsen Schultz

Author:Tamsen Schultz [Schultz, Tamsen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-03-11T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

A chill whispered across Charlotte’s skin, and she frowned. She hadn’t been cold since she’d landed in the Caribbean, why was she cold now? And where was she? The bed she was lying on was stiff and uncomfortable. Not like Damian’s cozy king-sized bed with decadent cotton sheets.

Her eyelids felt heavy and she tried to open them.

“Come back to me, Charlotte,” she heard Damian say.

She frowned again. Had she left him? Again? She remembered leaving him a long time ago, but hadn’t she just been with him? Yes, she had. They’d just been together when—

Adrenaline shot through her and her eyes flew open. “Are you okay?” she said. Or “croaked” probably would have been a better word.

The chair Damian had been sitting on scraped across the floor as he rose, his hand holding hers.

“You’re back,” he said, stroking her forehead.

“I never went anywhere. I held your hand the entire time,” she said. Memories of the plummet into the marina waters and the explosion that followed flooded back. “Are you okay? And Dominic?”

“Everyone is fine,” he answered. “It’s you we were worried about. You lost consciousness for a little while. We finally got you to cough up all the water you’d swallowed, but then you were a little out of it when we brought you in. You’ve been sleeping for a few hours.”

“Just a few hours?” she asked.

He nodded.

She tested her body, moving each limb just a tiny bit, and found she could feel everything. She was a little sore but not too bad. “I must be okay. I don’t feel like I’ve injured anything.”

Damian pulled his seat close to the bed and sat, keeping her hand in his. “You’re fine. The doctor took some scans and no major injuries. You did stretch one of your stitches, but it didn’t pull out altogether. She tightened it up, cleaned the wound again, and gave you some more antibiotics. They even said they'd discharge you once you’d been awake for a little while.”

Charlotte let out a long exhale. Twice in less than three days, she’d almost died. And she’d only survived today because Damian had pulled her off Simon’s boat and into the water on the other side of the dock.

She curled her fingers tightly around his and started to speak, but he cut her off.

“I never wanted to look too deeply at myself,” he said.

Charlotte had no idea what Damian wanted to say to her but she sensed it was important and so she stayed silent as he struggled with words. Finally, he took a deep breath and spoke again.

“When I was a Ranger, so many of my friends and brothers suffered physical injuries or different kinds of trauma, that it felt wrong that I pretty much always just walked away—away from every mission, every tour, and eventually the Army itself. I was grateful, of course, but there was always a little part of me that wondered why it was so easy for me to walk away, why I didn’t end up with PTSD or something similar.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.