Yet, he’d saved me.

“Why?” I asked again.

When he looked at me, his expression was somber. “I can’t explain it.”

“Let me know when you can.” I made a move to get out of bed, but Nathan gruffly pulled the covers back over me.

“You need rest.”

“I’ve had plenty of rest. I want to get up.” I tried again, and he gripped my arms.

“Will you just listen to me and lie back down?” With a frustrated curse he handed me a clean T-shirt and turned his back.

“Something on your mind, Nathan?” I quickly slipped out of the soiled shirt and into the fresh one, pausing at the sight of the bumpy scar that bisected my chest.

His shoulders sagged with exhaustion. “This isn’t the first time I’ve gone against the Movement. I’m on probation as it is.”

I arranged the sheets around my bare lower half. “You can turn around now.”

When he did, I saw him eye the scrap of bare leg that peeked out from beneath the covers. He quickly averted his gaze.

“Are you sorry?” What would I do if he said yes?

Nathan didn’t answer immediately. “Carrie, when I found you, my only thought was to stay with you until you died. But it took so long. Just when I thought you’d actually…you’d pull right back. Honestly, I’ve never seen anyone fight so hard. But the damage was too much. There was no way you could have healed yourself. Not as new as you are.” He sat on the bed, facing me.

“Did you look at the scar?” He touched the front of my shirt, just below my collarbone, and a jolt went through me.

“Yes.” I couldn’t manage more than a whisper.

He closed his eyes and didn’t remove his hand. “He cut you from here—” His fingers slipped down, passing between my breasts and coming to rest on the hollow of my rib cage. He opened his hand and rested his palm against my stomach for a moment before tracing back to my neck. “To here. But it wasn’t just a cut, it was like—”

“How a book opens?” I knew what it must have looked like to someone not used to such a sight. “You can pry the ribs apart pretty wide. But I’m in one piece now.”

“I helped you along.” He smiled and pointed to the nightstand where a stack of surgical texts rested. “Like I said, you’re too new to heal something that serious.”

“Nathan, how on earth—”

“If I told you, you probably wouldn’t want to know. I didn’t exactly have high-tech surgical instruments here.” He motioned to the folding table, where the handles of rusty pliers jutted out from the first aid kit.

My stomach churned, but it could have been leftover nausea from the morphine. “Humor me.”

“I used wire to hold your…sternum?”

I nodded at the correct terminology and let him continue.

“To hold it together.” He looked away. “I had to wrap it around and around. I wouldn’t go through any metal detectors, if I were you.”