Page 4 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
My hip hit the ground.
Hard.
A sharp bolt of pain shot up my side.
Damn, that hurt.It was sure to bruise in a way that would make sitting down a tactical decision for the next several days.
The whole time I kept my head tightly tucked above hers, plastering her body to mine, one arm around her shoulders, the other braced against the pavement.
Protect. Stabilize. Assess. Keeping her safe was my top priority.
My hip had already filed its complaint—a deep throb I set aside to deal with later.
No sharp intake of breath from her. No immediate recoil. No dead weight against me.
Good. That was good.
She’d landed half on top of me, half on the ground. Her heart pounded against my ribs—faster than mine, and her arms gripped me tight, telling me the exact moment her body understood how close that had been.
The truck was gone and the street had gone weirdly quiet—that particular stillness of a moment that could have gone terribly wrong. I didn’t move and neither did she. For two or three seconds, the world narrowed to the sound of our breathing, steady and close, finding a rhythm neither of us had chosen.
Then Delaney sucked in a breath. She lifted her head slowly, her green eyes blinking up at me, wide and stunned.
Then her breathing returned, fast and uneven. Color flooded her cheeks, spreading across her tan skin and down her neck. I tracked the progression as if I were conducting a clinical study.
Her chest pressed into mine with every shaky breath, and my brain—deeply unhelpful and apparently suffering from oxygen deprivation—decided this was the perfect time to catalog everything about this moment. The way she fit against me. Her warm weight. The texture of her shirt. The scent of lavender and peppermint drifting up to me, not an unpleasant scent, and I wondered if it was from her shampoo or her soap.
It didn’t bother me as most scents typically did.
This was not the time for me to act like a horny teenager who’d never touched a girl before, but here we were.
I cleared my throat and gently urged her off as my body responded to her nearness in a way that was getting harder to hide with each passing second.Damn it.If she knew, she’d taunt me endlessly.
She scrambled to her feet. “What the hell, Marc?”
I pushed myself up, stifling a groan and wincing as my hip protested. “You’re welcome,” I snapped. The warm, fuzzy feeling from holding her evaporated faster than spilled isopropyl alcohol.
“I almost died!” She crossed her arms over her chest, which drew my attention to exactly where I shouldn’t be looking.
“That’s what I was preventing,” I responded, sarcasm overlaying every word as I brushed off dirt from my pants. The least she could do was be grateful.
She shoved at my chest. It did nothing except remind me that we only had a few layers between us and my body had very strong opinions about that. “By tackling me into the ground? Did you miss the day in medical school where they covered ‘first, do no harm?’”
“School of Veterinary Medicine,” I corrected, fighting the urge to grab her wrists and hold her hand—nope. Not going there. “And I know I’d have remembered the lecture about what to do when a stubborn woman chases a goat into traffic.”
“I wasn’t—” she sputtered, her eyes flashing. “I was trying tosavehim.”
“From what? A full belly and a carefree life? Because he seemed pretty content destroying your plants.”
A feral, low-sounding growl left Delaney’s mouth. “Ugh. At least I have a heart.”
“Having a functioning brain capable of recalling information doesn’t preclude having a heart, Delaney. They’re not mutually exclusive organs, despite what you may think.”
The goat bleated.
We both turned.
It stood five feet away, staring at us with what I could only describe as malicious intent. A hoof scraped on the ground. It was plotting something. Probably anarchy.
