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he whispers, sliding his fingers up my arm. “Usually it would just be about fuckin’, but I know me and this is different. I want you, there’s no fuckin’ doubt about that. But something about this is different.” He stops moving when his fingers hit the strap of my sling and he narrows his eyes as he shifts the edge of my shirt out of the way and growls. “When was the last time you changed the bandage and cleaned that?”
    Normally I would be pushing him away for touching my shirt and looking at my bandages, like I did with Knox, but Gentry doesn’t make me want to hide for some reason, so I don’t move. His tone leaves no room for me to lie my way out of it anyway, so I don’t.
    “When I left the hospital before flying home yesterday.” 
    “Woman, where the hell is your medical stuff!” he scowls at me, waiting for me to answer him.
    “In the top of the duffle by the door.”
    Gentry steps away from me, letting his feet slam against the floor as he heads to grab my bag and sets it in his chair. Pulling out everything he needs, he drags me away from the counter and gently unhooks the sling, holding my arm where it needs to be. Dropping the sling to the counter, he rushes around it to wash his hands before coming back to me. He steps up between my legs and slowly starts to unbutton my shirt. 
    “You don’t have to do this,” I mumble, suddenly regretting my decision to not push him away. The second he sees what is under my shirt he’s going to realize how much of a screw up I am and he’ll know exactly how weak I am. “You didn’t need to stay with me.”
    “You stood in the rain and let all this get wet and then didn’t clean it when you got home. I didn’t realize it was a bullet wound while you were gettin’ wet or I would have pulled you back inside. You have to clean it and shit or it’ll get infected, Emerson,” he scolds me, making me feel like the weak girl I was back in basic training. My eyes fall to the floor but he isn’t having any of that. Lifting my chin, he forces me to look at him. “And I don’t do anything I don’t want to do.”
    I nod, letting his words sink in as I help him take my shirt off. In the middle of my kitchen I sit shirtless but am suddenly more naked than taking off any amount of clothing could make me feel. Gentry snaps a pair of gloves on and starts to pull the Tegaderm loose from my skin. It pulls the scab as it comes loose, but I do my best to stifle the noise that my body thinks it needs to make. This pain is nothing compared to other things I’ve been through, but it still hurts like hell. I don’t want to re-cover it because I know it will hurt when I have to change it again, but I know I’ll have to.
    “Sorry,” he mumbles, never taking his eyes off what he’s doing. It takes a few minutes to get it all off since the fucker starts on the inside of my right tit and goes through the muscles on my upper arm. “Fuck that thing is huge.”
    “That’s what she said,” I finally manage to force out, trying to lighten the mood again. The smile on his lips steals my breath away. Thankfully, it keeps my mind occupied as he slides his fingers along my skin a few inches from the scab, tracing it from start to finish. I close my eyes as he touches me, letting the feeling of his skin on mine calm me.
    After a minute of simply staring at the physically weakest part of me, he whispers back to me with humor filling his voice. “Yeah, that’s been said before.”
    “Good to know. If I really want it I know where I can find what I couldn’t at McDonald’s last night.”
    He nods, blowing on my skin after cleaning it so it will dry faster. “As bad as it looks, it doesn’t look like it hit anything that couldn’t be repaired. Few more days and I don’t think you’ll need to be covered anymore.”
    Thank God.
    “Through and through,” I admit. “I guess it was a teenager that hit me when I wasn’t looking. I must have turned just in time because