makeup."
Eden should know all about that. She'd been living in close quarters with the other Outsiders for months. Hadn't they taught her anything?
"So, you just want me to bandage it up?" She touched it gently with a piece of cloth and he flinched. Wow, he was really not acting as macho as he would have hoped and this was not the way he'd imagined their meeting going. Not that he'd ever really believed it possible for them to ever be in the same room together.
"Maybe dab it with some antibacterial stuff and then bandage it up."
She nodded. "Okay."
He would not act like a baby when she put the antiseptic on his head. He would not…
Samuel sucked in his breath when the first painful tingle of the cleaning solution met his open wound. He bit down on his tongue until he could taste blood and finally he had to make do with just shutting his eyes.
"I'm so sorry this is hurting." He could feel her gentle hands dabbing at the wound again. "I thought I'd been kidnapped. I didn't know it was you , obviously."
"I did kind of kidnap you, but I did it to help. I couldn't have been thinking too clearly or I would have considered the idea that you would awaken while I was out and be afraid."
"I thought about trying to leave but then I heard someone—I guess you—at the door and I panicked."
He pushed her hand away from where she dabbed on him. Taking her hand, he pulled the Band-Aid she held from her grip. He'd put it on himself; salvage his dignity. Somehow act like the man he liked to think himself to be.
His head was already clearing. The Outsider gift of healing was really incredible. If only it could have regrown his skin…
She smiled at him, her eyes looking beautiful with their green depths.
"You broke my chair."
He felt dumb right after he uttered the words. Truth was—he didn't give a flying fuck about the chair. She could break anything of his that she wanted just so long as she stayed safe. Being here with Eden, it did something to him. Ever since he'd become aware of her, when he was ten years old and the strange being had appeared to him in a dream and laid out the truth of his life to him, he'd wanted to take care of her.
At first, it had been entirely platonic. He had a person out there in the world who felt like his very best friend. When he tried, he could touch her mind and visit for small amounts of time. Later on, as he had changed, his feelings for her had altered. But by then he'd been too deformed for her to look at him.
Samuel had known from the moment he woke up in the hospital with his skin destroyed that nothing with Eden would ever be the way he'd dreamed it would be. There had been times that he'd changed his mind, times when he'd thought he could make the face switching work in a way so that a relationship between them would be possible.
As his mind regained its center of gravity, his skin started to itch again. The reprieve he'd temporarily had fled the room. This was exactly why he and Eden should never have seen each other in person.
"I'm sorry about that. I have three hundred dollars, well two hundred and fifty. Will that replace your chair?"
"It cost something like twenty dollars for that chair and I would never take your money. In a million years, I would never dream of it."
Samuel rolled over onto his knees. He grabbed the edge of the wall and used it to brace himself enough that he could stand up. The room spun again for a second but then righted itself. He took a deep breath. No way, no how was he going to pass out in front of Eden.
She smiled and before he could blink, tears fell from her eyes, rolling down her cheeks. "I've wanted to meet you for so long. I thought you never wanted to see me."
Oh hell. She cried. Samuel had never been very good at managing women's tears. His mother and his sister had done it from time to time and it'd made him crazy. Unable to resist, he pulled her into his arms.
Yes , his soul seemed to scream, this was what he wanted, what he'd always
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