But right where she’d gripped his forearms, the clothes were burned through, the skin beneath covered in angry red welts. Handprints. She’d burned right through the tattoo on his left arm. She was on her feet in an instant, wondering if she should be on her knees begging for forgiveness instead. It must have hurt like hell. Yet he had taken it—the beating, the burning—while she let out those words that had clouded her senses for so many weeks now. “I am … so sorry,” she started, but he held up a hand. “You do not apologize,” he said, “for defending the people you care about.”
