A Season of Love. Kim Watters

      Blinking, she forced her thoughts back to the present. She inhaled sharply. She’d tried to keep from staring earlier, but her gaze had kept returning to his injured hand. She was curious. But to touch it?

      Swallowing, Holly reached out. She stopped short. It seemed too intimate a gesture for someone she hardly knew, despite the fact Ethan and Jared had gone to school together. “I’m really not comfortable with this.”

      “And I’m not going to be comfortable with the idea of seeing the questions in your eyes all the time.”

      “But—”

      “It looks worse than it really is, but I understand.” Ethan shrugged and stared at his hand as he withdrew. “It does take getting used to.”

      “I’m sorry, Ethan.”

      Holly felt his pain again behind his mask of indifference, confirming there was more going on inside him than he let on. The bomb had taken more than just his fingers and five lives. It left behind a shell of a man, struggling to deal with everyday life. He suffered the survivor’s guilt that ate away at the soul like a moth devoured clothing.

      Holly wore it every day like a piece of her wardrobe.

      She should have never insisted that she and Jared attend the Chamber of Commerce function when the weather forecaster had predicted the cold snap that would turn the melted snow into ice. But how was she to know in that brief moment she took her eyes from the road that the argument would be their last?