Despite Hannah's best efforts, she'd succumbed to sleep watching television in David's bed. There was no chance of her going back to her apartment after that call. The moment David arrived home, she needed to see for herself that he was okay. And since it was daylight by the time she heard the front door open and close, she wouldn't have seen his headlights if she'd gone to rest in her own bed.

When she awoke to the sounds of him shutting the door and the metal of his keys hitting the table, Hannah pushed herself out of the bed and walked down the hallway to find him sitting on his couch in complete silence, elbows propped against his knees and his chin resting against his clasped hands. There was gauze wrapped around the bicep of his left arm, but other than that, it seemed only his spirit was tainted from the events of the night before.

"Look at me, Dav—id."

His head tipped back and forth above his hands. "I can't."

"Why not?"

"Not ready to see how you look back at me," David muttered.

Strange how he'd just killed someone, yet his fear seemed to stem from how Hannah would react to it. Yes, he may have taken a life, but she could never see him as a killer. So Hannah walked over to him, her steps sluggish from the lack of sleep, and ran her fingers through his shoulder length chestnut hair. "I could never be scared of you."

"Wouldn't blame you if you were."

"Well, I'm not. Just wish you had—n't gone and played the hero. You could have been killed, Dav—id."

"They'd be ironic. Survive four tours in Iraq  and end up gettin' taken down by a low life shitbag lookin' for some quick cash to pay off  his dealer."

David's head drooped a bit as she continued running her fingers through his hair and it laid to rest against her stomach. "I thought the days of me taking someone's life were passed me."

Hannah wasn't aware he was military, though it didn't surprise her when she thought about it. It was the reason why his eyes had so much darkness behind them, why he looked like he'd lived so many lifetimes of pain. "Please look at me."

He let out a heavy breath that sunk through her shirt and heated her skin before he separated from her just enough to look up.

"What do you see?" she asked.

"Everything good in this world. The kind of good that shouldn't be around a guy like me."

"I'm where I want to be, so don't even try p-push—ing me away bec—ause it won't work."

David shook his head, then slid his arms around her legs. "I got no intention of pushing you away, honey. I should, but I'm too big a coward to go back to livin' my life without you in it. Just wish I was a good enough man to deserve a woman like you."

Those simple words sent her mind into a frenzy, as if all her thoughts had just been tossed into a blender. 

As she felt David's lips press against the fabric of her shirt, that blender was turned on high. "You're the one who should be pushing me away, Hannah. I'm no good for you. The man I was before I went overseas would have been treated you right. He would have charmed your parents, held the door for you, taken you on fancy dates, been given the green light by your friends. 

"I ain't that guy anymore, Hannah. Now I'm the guy that doesn't hesitate to pull the trigger. I'm the guy that swallows that shit whole and carries it around with me everywhere I go. You shouldn't be around that sort of shit and you should run like hell away from me."

Yet all she wanted was to do the opposite, to feel the tender touch of the rough man she'd somehow tamed by her mere presence in his life. And she felt every last one of those touches like they'd branded her skin in the best possible way. The way his fingertips glided against the back of her legs and the way his hot breath felt against her stomach.

He was so much better for her than he realized. He saw her; not her former self and not the person she was stuck being after the accident. Her. No one looked at her anymore and saw the woman who was trapped inside. No one but him. He was her sanctuary from herself. With him, she know longer felt trapped in the body of a broken woman. More than that, she wanted to be the one who helped release David from his broken mind.

Hannah dropped to her knees in front of him and looked David dead in the eye. They looked back at her unwavering without so much as a blink breaking their stare. Everything he'd been through... she could see it festering in the shades of blue, speckled with the truth of his pain. 

Like his touch branded her skin, the moment her lips touched his, every detail became branded in her mind; every hesitant movement, every breath he took in through his nose and the way his fingers felt against the skin of her neck when he allowed himself to give in. This wasn't her first kiss by any means, but it was the first since her accident that hadn't left her feeling crippled and lost. Instead, it helped collide the woman she was now with the woman she was before. Hannah found herself in that kiss and no matter how short lived it was, everything in the moment ensured it wouldn't be the last. 

When Hannah opened her eyes, his were already open, but unwilling to look at her. "I'm not go—ing to run from you, Dav—id. I don't know what kind of man you were be—fore, but the man you are now m-means ev—er—ything to me. I d-don't want to go back to liv—ing my life w-with—out you in it eith—er."

Hannah stood on wobbly legs and held out her hand. "Come and lay down with m-me."

It may have been passed dawn by this point, but Hannah couldn't have slept more than an hour and he hadn't slept at all. David waited a few seconds before taking her hand and pushing himself off the couch, then followed her to his bedroom. 

David undressed in front of her, letting his clothing drop to the floor until he stood there in only his boxers. Then he went into his dresser and pulled out a shirt, walking up to her and holding it out. "You can wear this."

With the closed distanced, she saw the scars across his body; a hundred stories told in the jagged pink skin. Hannah reached out and touched the longest one on his chest and saw his eyes close at the contact. Where his eyes told of the darkness within him, his tainted skin held the secrets he wasn't yet willing to divulge to her. 

He handed her the shirt in silence before crawling into the bed, proof he wasn't yet willing to talk to her about the scars. Hannah knew it would take time to get there, to hear all his past escape from his lips and feel safe in her knowing that truth. And she wouldn't push him for that truth just as he wouldn't push her to go into detail about her own. He knew of the accident, but not of all the pain that came with it. 

Rather than go into the bathroom to change, Hannah turned to face the wall and undressed there before sliding the shirt over her head until it fell just above her knees. She didn't want to hide from him. Hannah felt like she'd been hiding from the world for the last three years. For the first time in what felt like thousand years, she wanted to seen; truly seen. 

"You're so damn beautiful, Hannah. Bein' around you these last few weeks, I sometimes forget to breathe just lookin' at you or listenin' to you."

She turned to look at him laying on the bed with his scarred chest exposed and his hair splayed across his pillow. If any man was ever 'beautiful' to her, it was David. He didn't remind her of any man she'd known before him and most definitely wasn't the typical kind of beautiful. His skin had been sliced and punctured, his eyebrows were naturally raised almost as if he were forever calling 'bullshit' on something and his mouth gave the same impression with a slight curve seeming to always appear on one side as if there was always a secret he was taunting you to tempt out of him. And while she never used to find longer hair particularly attractive on a man, she'd been fighting temptation to run her fingers through it up until that night when she was finally able to do just that.

It wasn't just his looks that made him deceptively beautiful to her, but the way he saw beauty in her flaws. 

"Tonight all I could think about was your face and wonderin' if there was some small detail I missed and wouldn't get a chance to see. You were the only thing on my mind, darlin'. Even when it was over, all I could think about was gettin' back home to you."

David, she could tell, was not the man who gave his heart to another freely. He was the kind of man who kept it under lock on key, refusing to let emotion take hold over the physical. She knew from Meggie that he was strictly a one night stand kind of guy, but that rule seemed far from strict the way he was looking at her now.

Still, looks could be deceptive and he had just gone through something that left him feeling vulnerable and Hannah didn't want to mistake that for something else. He was her landlord as well as her boss and if she mistook this whole thing, it could only lead them toward disaster. 

"Come lay down next to me and tell me what's on your mind, 'cause it don't look good."

Hannah did as he asked, well.. told, and went and laid next to him, covering her body with the blanket. "I'm try—ing not to r-read into this."

"Into what, darlin'?"

He pulled her body next to him and she rest her head against the large scar on his chest. "All of t-this. I know you have r-ru-rules when it comes to wo—men and when it comes to em—ploy—ees."

David let out a heavy breath through his nose and squeezed her tighter. "There's an exception to damn near every rule, and you are my exception, Hannah. I ain't never been much afraid of dyin' until tonight, but I was afraid of never bein' able to see you again."