I forced a small smile past my apprehension. Raising the warm washcloth to his head, I pressed it against the clotted blood on his hair and started to wipe away rust-colored streaks.

When I gently increased the pressure, he flinched.

My touch lightened instantly. "Sorry."

He remained silent, staring at the opposite wall.

After a few moments, I managed to clean most of the surface of his hair. I now needed to see what the actual wound on his scalp looked like. Steeling myself against the possibility of finding something horrible, I parted the black strands of his hair carefully. My eyes darted back and forth between the wound and Jax's restrained expression.

There was a gash. A small one, though. More like a cut. Blood had stopped flowing from the opening, and every wipe of the washcloth sent fresh relief through me. It had made a mess, but there was no way he needed stitches.

I released a deep breath. Thank god. He'd been beaten, but he wasn't broken.

"There," I said, gently wiping the last of the blood away. "That looks a bit better."

Jax let out a low grunt. "Thanks."

The head wound looked like the worst of it, but I knew it wasn't the only place where he'd been hit. "Now . . . can you take off your shirt for me? I need to take a look underneath."

"Later," he said dismissively.

I set the washcloth down on the side table and went to get the first aid kit I'd remembered was stored in a cupboard near the bar. "Better to patch you up now than to wait for morning," I called back.

His eyes closed as he took a long, deep breath. When he opened them again, his voice was soft and low. "Fine, I'll do it. For you."

I squeezed his hand, quietly accepting the significance of his words. Part of his irritability and defensiveness came from the physical pain, but a larger part came from how vulnerable he was feeling at the moment. And as difficult as it was for him, he was willing to lower his guard, to be vulnerable, for me. "Thank you."

Together, we slowly lifted his shirt off. He winced hard as he moved his shoulders, stiffly sliding his muscular arms out. I looked at Jax's torso, naked as the cloth peeled away, and suddenly felt like all the air had been sucked out of me.

An angry bruise, red, green and black, radiated in an irregular circle from his side, a Rorschach blot of pain and suffering. Raw and shiny, the dark splotch stretched halfway across his body.

I'd never seen a bruise so big. I suddenly felt like I'd been the one kicked in the gut.

Jax saw the expression on my face and looked down. He tried to shift his torso away so I couldn't see the bruise, but it was too late.

I sank down near him to take a closer look. Circles within circles patterned his side. This was clearly a lot worse than a normal bruise—it was the result of heavy boots repeatedly kicking at the same unprotected area. It was a bruise with bruises of its own.

"It's really not as bad as it looks," he said quickly, casually sliding his arm over to cover the discolored skin.

I held my hand near a black-purple spot toward the center. I probed the tender skin as gently as I could. "Does this hurt?" I asked, looking into his eyes.

He swallowed stiffly, his body tensing. "Not much."

He was beginning to put up his guard again. I wanted him to see a doctor—and soon. "I need to take you to the hospital to get you checked out."

"I'm fine." His tone was low, with a forceful edge.

I looked at him sitting there on the couch: his hair hanging in limp tangles damp from the washcloth, his body battered.

"Jax, I'm not trying to pressure you, but you don't seem fine." I took his hand into mine and gave it a soft squeeze.

Darkness clouded his face as he pulled his hand away. "Dammit, Riley," he snarled. "I told you I'm fine. I'm not going to spend the night in some hospital just so you can feel better."

The blood drained from my face. Suddenly, my hands were icy cold. I knew Jax was tired, hurt, and upset, but I didn't know why he'd make it so personal when I'd done everything I could to help him. I opened my mouth to reply, but nothing came out.

As my eyes began to sting with tears, Jax looked away, a pained expression on his face.

"Fuck." His voice was much quieter now. "I'm . . . sorry. I know you're trying to help. I just . . . I fucking hate hospitals. Can we drop this for tonight?"

I wanted to say yes—but even more than that, I wanted Jax to be okay.

He looked at me tenderly and gave my shoulder a soft squeeze. "I'm fine. Really. I know it looks bad, but it's really not that bad. It's just a bruise. I've had much worse. Trust me."

The sincerity in his voice momentarily broke through my worry, making me realize that I'd been shaking. I'd just had the craziest night of my entire life with multiple close calls for both me and Jax. Was I overreacting? The blood on his head had looked so much worse than it turned out to be. Maybe he had a point.

I touched his side again as a sanity check.

He exhaled. "I didn't say it doesn't hurt. It does, but I'm saying it's not serious. At least it's not, unless you keep poking it."

"Okay," I said finally. "But if it gets worse—"

"I'll call a doctor." His eyes, no longer dull and glazed, had a renewed depth I realized I'd been missing. "I promise."

Looking into his warm gaze, I felt tense muscles I didn't even know I had starting to relax. My shoulders loosened, and I exhaled all at once. The relief was palpable. The crisis was over, at least for tonight.

"Let's go upstairs to rest," he said.

We made our way up the stairs one slow step at a time. As we entered his room and laid down, I shook my head, trying to make sense of everything. I still couldn't believe the night we'd had. It felt like a terrible dream.

Memories flashed across my skull like a slideshow. The flickering firelight, the street lit by a Molotov cocktail—one that I'd thrown. Darrel's gravelly voice calling me a little bitch, the Reapers kicking Jax with sounds that still echoed faintly in my mind . . . how long would it take me to get the images out of my head?

"You okay?" Jax said, a look of concern on his face as he laid next to me.

"Yeah," I replied, trying to smile. "I'm fine. Just a little tired, that's all."

He touched my cheek softly before flicking off the light. I nestled in against the warmth of his body, taking care not to press on his bruise.

Within minutes, he was snoring softly. I laid awake, listening to his breath. I'd almost lost Jax tonight . . . and in the end, we'd both been lucky to make it out as unscathed as we did. I shivered, unable to stop seeing Darrel's angry face every time I closed my eyes. He was Jax's dad—and he only wanted to hurt his son. The injustice of it struck me to my very core. And now, with Jax resting up in his bed, it was like there'd been no real consequences. He seemed unperturbed, at least for now, but I wasn't so sure. In my experience, life didn't work that way: when you did something that big, you couldn't just walk away without feeling the effects one way or another.

I curled my hand around Jax's hip. With time and rest, our aching bodies would recover. But I'd seen the pain in Jax's eyes—would time and rest be enough to heal that kind of hurt?