Pain flooded his eyes, yanking her back to her kitchen, to the clang of the knife on the floor next to them. To the pandemonium of voices asking—demanding—to know how he was . . . how she was . . . what the hell had just happened? But the pain in his eyes—

“You’re in pain,” she said, springing to her feet and grabbing his arm. “Someone help him up. He’s hurt himself.” His eyes squeezed shut as Jonah grabbed his other arm, and together they helped him up, but he couldn’t straighten his leg. Obviously couldn’t put weight on it.

“Someone call 911,” she shouted, then remembered that Trisha was a doctor. “Trisha! Where’s Trisha? Someone get Trisha—”

“Relax,” he said, steadying her with those kaleidoscope eyes. “Breathe.”

“I’m here.” Trisha squatted down in front of him and reached for his leg. “I’m a doctor. Hi. Dr. Trisha Raje. May I?”

He nodded at Trisha, then threw a quick look at Ashna again, which didn’t help her breathe at all. “I’m fine. I just landed on my stitches.”

Ashna’s heart spasmed.

From across the kitchen Nisha mouthed, What the hell was that?

“I’m going to have to cut that. The pant, not the leg.” How could Trisha joke right now? But he smiled.

Ashna handed her a pair of shears. Trisha cut the fabric, exposing one massively muscled calf. He’d always had the most beautiful legs. The most beautiful body. The most beautiful—

His knee was swelling so fast it looked like it might burst. A fleshy pink scar edged in angry red staple marks stretched at its seams. In his eyes was pure agony.

Trisha pushed the denim out of the way and examined the knee. “We need to get you to the ER. There’s internal bleeding. They’ll have to drain it,” she said as though talking about scooping seeds out of bitter melon. “That was spectacular, by the way. I think you saved Ashna’s toes.”

“Pleasure?” he said in that way he’d always had of turning everything into a question.

I love you?

Who made words like that sound like a question?

“I am so sorry,” she said, her voice shaking despite her best effort, everything inside her shaking.

“No apology necessary,” he said. Then his voice tipped suddenly low and cold. “Not for this.”

Just like that he was a stranger again, a stranger who had just slid across her kitchen floor on his hurt knee.

The way his gaze touched hers was the opposite of his voice. In his eyes was every bit of the knowing they had shared.

Ashna stepped away from him. Suddenly she was shaking for a whole different reason. He was wrong; this was the only thing he deserved an apology for. Every other apology was his to give. Not that all the apologies in the world would change anything.

“The ambulance is here,” Jonah shouted across the kitchen.