Promise

I started to look up at him, to make sure he wasn't cut anywhere, when Mom sucked her breath, distracting me.

'Alexis, honey, don't move,' she instructed, her words slow and deliberate, as she moved to my right between me and the car. Tristan cupped his hand against the side of my face and tilted it up toward his before I could see what had her enraptured. He pulled me tighter into him.

'Just look at me,' he said quietly.

'What's going on?' I whispered, afraid to know. Tristan held my eyes with his and I could tell by his expression it wasn't good.

I immediately thought of the driver and the car door swinging open just before impact. Did he fly out of the car? Is he under the car? My stomach lurched at the thought.

'It's all right. It's not in an artery or anything,' Mom said and then a sharp pain tore through my thigh.

'Ouch! Son of a witch !' I screamed, trying to twist myself free, but not able to in Tristan's tight clutch.

I looked over my shoulder and Mom held a shard of glass at least five inches long and two inches wide, half of it covered in blood. My blood.

In a strange, delayed reaction, the pain suddenly screamed up and down my leg. Then more stabs and throbs in my arms and one on my head. A tickling sensation ran down the back of my head and I lifted my hand to it. When I pulled it away, blood coated the tips of my fingers. I glanced up at Tristan while balling my hand into a fist to hide the blood. I could tell he'd already seen it, though. This is so not good .

'Police,' he said.

'Huh?'

' Police , Alexis, you need to get out of here,' Mom said.

It finally registered when I heard the sirens a few seconds later, still several blocks away. Oh, crap! Witnesses! I felt the cuts on my arms already starting to heal.

'Everyone okay?' Owen called from outside. Not Owen, too!

'We're fine, Owen. Check on the driver and anyone else in the car,' Mom called back. She lowered her voice. 'Tristan, can you take care of Alexis?'

'Yes, I'll take her home.'

' Sophia …!'

She ignored me. 'Are you sure, Tristan? There's a lot of blood….'

'I'm fine, Sophia. I love her. She'll be fine with me.'

I heard the confidence in his voice, but hardly paid attention to the meaning of the words. Except for that one phrase. He loves me?! He'd never said that before. While I rolled that over in my mind, wondering why he felt the need to say it now , they stared at each other for what seemed like several minutes, but it had to have been only a second or two. Then Mom nodded.

'Get her home, then,' she said. I panicked.

'Sophia, please, no !' I begged her as Tristan bent down to gently lift me in a cradled position.

What the heck is she thinking? How could she let me go with him? She knew this was my biggest issue.

'Honey, I have to stay here and take care of this mess. Tristan will take care of you. Don't worry. He'll be fine with it all.'

I didn't have a chance to argue. She already hopped onto the car's hood to get through the window and help Owen with the driver, and Tristan already walked swiftly toward the back of the store, easily carrying me like I was nothing but a sack of feathers. There was no real argument, anyway. Mom obviously had to stay and I couldn't exactly walk home. Not yet, anyway, and there was no time to wait—the sirens wailed just a block or two away now.

My head and leg throbbed with each step Tristan took. I bit my lip, fighting the tears and trying to keep a straight face as we exited through the back door. I knew from previous experience to pretend like nothing was as bad as it looked, so it wouldn't seem quite so bizarre when it healed freakishly fast.

Tristan set me down on my feet at the bike and I realized quickly I couldn't put any weight on my right leg. He pulled off his t-shirt and tore a sleeve off, bunching it up and giving it to me. 'For your head.'

I held the wadded cloth against the cut on my head while he carefully tied the rest of the shirt around my lower thigh, padding as much as he could against the cut, about two inches above my knee, on the outside of my thigh. I couldn't help the winces of pain.

'Are you okay to ride?'

'Yeah,' I mumbled, 'it's not far.'

I couldn't even enjoy the fact that I leaned against his bare back, my arms around his bare waist, as panic and pain fought with each other on the short ride home. The smaller cuts on my arms were already closing. The bigger gash in my thigh hurt like hell, so I knew it would take longer—I could feel the shard had cut through deep, probably severing tendons or muscles. I squeezed my eyes shut to keep the tears at bay and tried to focus on a plan. The four-block ride wasn't long enough, though. Too soon, Tristan lifted me off the bike and carried me inside.

'Um…' My voice came out in a rough whisper. 'Bathroom.'

He carefully set me down on the tub's edge and I rearranged his sleeve to find a clean section and pressed it against my head. He opened the cabinet under the sink and while his back was to me, I pulled the sleeve off my head again and quickly glanced at it. It came away clean. I sighed. Why do I have to be such a freak?

'Should we use these towels?' he asked, holding up Mom's pretty guest towels. Why we had them, I didn't know—we never had guests. But I saw the opportunity and seized it.

'Get the old ones in the kitchen, in the broom closet. Sophia'd kill me if I ruined her good ones.'

As soon as he was in the hallway, I lunged forward to shut the bathroom door, quickly locking it before he realized what I'd done. I grabbed a towel—an everyday one, just in case Mom really would mind—and crawled to the bathtub. Tristan pounded on the door.

'Alexis! What are you doing?'

'Um…going to the bathroom?' I hated that it sounded like a question.

He didn't respond at first. I turned the tub faucet on just enough to dampen the towel and started cleaning my arms to see the damage. Almost all the cuts were completely gone, no evidence at all they ever existed. A few that must have been deeper were just red jags. They'd disappear, too, within ten minutes or so.

'Can I come in now?' Tristan called through the door.

'You know what…I'm fine,' I said, trying hard to make my voice sound right. 'You can go now. I can take care of this. It's really not that bad.'

Guilt stabbed at me. I hated lying to him. I didn't want to hide things anymore, even this. I had the urge to just let him watch…see the healing process with his own eyes. He must have heard the lie in my voice.

'You are not fine. Let me in!' He pounded on the door again.

Damn it! I was precisely at the moment I'd been dreading and desiring at the same time. I wanted Tristan to know everything about me, but I was actually scared of his reaction—more scared than anything that already happened tonight. Will he call me a freak, too? Will he leave me? The tears finally welled in my eyes, not just from the physical pain, but also from knowing the emotional pain that would cut even deeper.

Ignoring his pleas, I took the wrap off my thigh, needing to see how bad it was before I decided what to do. The pain screamed as I twisted my body and bent my leg at an odd angle to see. Ugh . A wave of nausea rolled over me.

The shard must have gone in at an angle, because the gash was at least three inches long and jagged. I dabbed it with Tristan's shirt and saw dark red meat. I was afraid if I looked too closely, I might see the bone, but blood flooded back to the surface, hiding the worst of it.

'Alexis, I'll break this door down if you don't let me in now !'

I sighed. No question he could do it, surely on his first try, even. I couldn't fight the tears any longer and they fell down my cheek, one by one. I crawled over to the door, holding his blood-soaked shirt back against my thigh.

'Tristan?' I said through the door, just loud enough to be heard without straining. I heard him slide down the door to my level.

'What, Alexis? Are you okay?'

'Um…no…I don't…think so,' I admitted, breathing through the pain.