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“Why did you save me?” Kamaria spits, taking a few stumbling steps backwards.
The man - Bruno, he’d said his name was, not that she’d asked - stares at her with brow furrowed as if she’s lost her mind. “What? What are you talking about?”
“You had to have a reason. So what is it? Why did you bring me out here to the middle of nowhere, because I know it wasn’t just to play doctor.” The forest spins around her as she speaks, but she refuses to back down, fists clenched tightly by her sides and eyes narrowed, watching his every move.
“Um…yes?” He throws his hands up in the air. “That’s exactly why I brought you here. You were shot. If I left you there you would have died.”
“Oh would you stop acting like I’m a little child who can’t take care of myself? You don’t even know anything about me!” She’s been taking care of herself for fourteen years, and she’s suffered much worse injuries than this.
“I know that you’ve got a bullet wound in your leg, and an infection that you’re apparently determined to let kill you.”
“Stop avoiding the question!” Her head pounds when she raises her voice, but she ignores that just like the heat radiating from her skin. “You had a reason for bringing me here. You want something from me. So which is it, my skills, or my body?” The flush in her cheeks increases with her words.
He growls low in his throat. “What is your deal with that? Speaking of not knowing anything about someone, what makes you think you can just start accusing me of being that kind of horrible person when you literally just met me? Have I touched you since you’ve been here?”
“Yes! You have!”
Groaning, he throws his head back in apparent frustration. “Have I touched you inappropriately? Have I touched you other than taking care of your wounded leg?
She glares at him even harder. “I don’t know. I was unconscious.” Her skin crawls and her stomach turns every time she thinks about it.
His jaw clenches, but he changes the subject, either done trying to convince her or avoiding the truth, she doesn’t know. “Woman, I swear if you do not sit down and rest and either let me check your leg or do it yourself…”
“You’ll do what?” she sneers, daring him to prove that he’s exactly the kind of person she fears.
“I’ll tie you down!”
There it is. Her heart skips a few beats at the threat. “I’d slice your throat before you could even begin.”
“You need to rest.”
“I don’t need you to take care of me!” She must have said it a dozen times over the past few days, but he refuses to listen.
“Fine!” Bruno wads up the bandages in his hand and throws them at her. “Have it your way! You don’t like me saving you, then save yourself!”
Finally. Kamaria bends over and snatches them up without another word, somehow managing to straighten back up without screaming or falling over despite the burning pain that shoots through her leg. Saving herself is exactly what she’s been trying to do this whole time.
.
.
“Why did you save me?”
The words are murmured into the night, almost drowned out by the crackle of the fire in front of her. But Bruno must hear them anyway, because he gives a low hum, shifting the arm that’s wrapped around her middle and lifting his head a little, facial hair prickling at the skin on her shoulder. He was probably almost asleep.
“Save you? When?”
Kamaria half expects some kind of playful jab about the number of times he’s saved her, which wouldn’t be untrue. Of course she’d have to remind him that she’s saved him an equal amount. But instead he just settles back in, tugging her a bit closer to his chest and burying his face in the back of her neck.
“That first day.” His breath on her skin is as warm and comforting as the heat from the campfire. “When I was shot. You could have just left me there. I wanted you to leave me there. But you didn’t.”
His voice sounds more awake when he speaks again. “Well first off, it was partially my fault that you got shot.”
“No it wasn’t,” she interrupts, a bit of a smirk on her lips. “I was the one who let myself be distracted. I was angry at you for interrupting me and insulting me -”
“Insulting you?”
Her smile grows. It all seems so ridiculous, thinking back on it now. “You said you were sure that you had been in the business longer than me, and that I worked under someone else.”
“And that was an insult?”
“It was to me.”
He huffs a laugh. “Right. Well, regardless of whose fault it actually was, I felt bad that I was involved in you getting shot. And I couldn’t just leave you there, unconscious and bleeding.”
“You could have. I tried to kill you.”
“Well yes, but that was before you knew how handsome and charming I am.”
She jabs her elbow backwards into his ribs, rolling her eyes at his overexaggerated grunt of pain. “I’m serious. You didn’t know me, I was obviously going to be a pain to deal with -”
“That’s for sure.”
This time she kicks his shin, but he pays her back by poking at her stomach and side until she’s squirming and slapping his hands, demanding that he stop in between squeals and gasps for air. He finally relents, and they curl up together again. Bruno presses a kiss to the side of her neck, and her eyes flutter shut. It’s still astounding to her, after all this time, how he can so easily show affection in these little ways that leave her breathless and feeling safe and so treasured. It’s the complete opposite of the type of physical contact she’d been used to. Sometimes she can still hardly believe how much her life has turned around.
“I couldn’t lose anyone else.” Now it’s his turn to drop to nearly a whisper. “I didn’t know you yet, but…I had the power to save your life. I couldn’t just leave you to die.”
Kamaria finds his hand on her stomach and slides her fingers in between his, squeezing tightly. They’ve both lost so many people, and she knows he still blames himself for his team’s deaths, just as she still sometimes feels guilty for surviving the attack on her people.
“Besides.” He raises up on his elbow so he can look down at her, fingers playing with the ends of her curls. “I might not have known just how important you’d end up being to me, but I could already tell that there was something special about you. I wasn’t prepared to let you disappear from my life as quickly as you appeared in it.” He pauses for a second. “Gosh, I’m lucky to have you in my life, Kamaria.”
Turning her head, she smiles up at him. “You were just extraordinarily impressed by my knife throwing skills.”
“I was. You’re right.” He nods, completely serious. “Also completely blown away by how beautiful you were.”
Heat spreads across her cheeks and up to the points of her ears, and she reaches up a hand to shove him away. “Shut up, you couldn’t even see my face yet.”
Laughing, he smacks another kiss onto her forehead before lying back down. “Nope, I just have an intuition for these sorts of things.”
Silence settles over them again. Kamaria breathes in the scent of the fire, the earth beneath her, and the feeling of her back pressed up against his chest.
“Thank you.”
“Mm?” He’s half asleep again.
“I don’t think I ever thanked you. For saving me. In…all the ways that you have.”
He nuzzles into her hair. “You don’t have to thank me. Saving you saved me, too.”