Which was a small miracle.
Because I was pissed beyond all reason.
She stumbled inside and managed to make it to the couch before she dropped down. I knew she was in shock. I could see it written all over her face. She wasn’t used to that kind of shit and watching someone get killed in front of her wasn’t easy, no matter how many times it happened.
Even still.
“What the fuck were you thinking?”
She looked up at me. “What?”
“When you went back to the alley. What the fuck were you thinking?”
She shifted a little. “I was thinking… the pills. I had to get them, right? That’s my money.”
I let a growl escape my throat. The fucking pills. That was the dumbest shit I’d ever heard. There were a few hundred dollars worth in that bag and her cut would’ve been miniscule. She risked her life for something like eighty or ninety bucks.
“God damn it, Leigh.” I clenched my fists. “I’m trying to keep you alive. You realize that, right?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Trying to keep me alive? You’re dangling me out like bait.”
I took a step closer. I felt my anger spike again as her words washed over me. I knew she was right, but it wasn’t that simple.
“You know what we’re trying to do here. Don’t pretend like this is something new I’m asking of you.”
“What do you even care? You got what you wanted. Three dead Jackals.”
“It wouldn’t matter if you got killed in the process.” I shook my head and wanted to shout at her, but I restrained myself. “It’s one thing to put you in the minimum amount of danger. But it’s a totally different thing for you to go running back toward a bunch of angry killers just for some fucking pills.”
“What do you want me to say then Owain?” A spark of anger flashed in her eyes. “You want me to get on my knees and apologize?”
I walked over to her, reached down, and grabbed her arm. I pulled her up off the couch with a grunt as she struggled against me.
“Come here,” I said, growling at her.
“Get the hell off me.”
I dragged her to the steps and she stopped fighting so much when she realized there was no use. I got her up the steps and shoved her into her room. She whirled on me, rage lighting up her face.
“What, are you going to lock me up?” she asked, practically shouting at me.
“No,” I said. “You need a shower. And I need you to stitch my arm.”
Her mouth opened like she wanted to fight me but her eyes moved down to the wound in my arm. It bled freely, though not bad. It was a graze, a deep one, but still just a graze. It wasn’t life threatening but it needed to be closed up sooner rather than later.
“Stitch your arm?” She shook her head. “You’re fucking insane. You know that, right?”
I grinned at her, showing her all my teeth like an angry lion. “God damn right I am. Stay there.”
I left her room and stomped into my bathroom. I had a medical kit in my close. I pulled it down, made sure I had everything I needed, and brought it back into her room. She paced around like a caged tiger.
“I’m not stitching your arm. Call that doctor.”
I held up the kit. “You’re doing it. Get in the bathroom.”
“No. Call the doctor, you psycho. I don’t know how to stitch up a wound.”
“I’ll walk you through it.” I marched into her bathroom, opened her shower, and turned on the water. I unbuttoned my shirt then slowly peeled it off.
She lingered in the doorway behind me. I felt her eyes on my body as I dropped the bloody shirt on the ground. Blood rolled down my muscle as I opened the kit up and pulled out some clean gauze. I sprayed the wound with an antiseptic and began to dab along its edges and its middle, cleaning it as best I could.
“Don’t just stand there. Needle and thread’s inside.”
“It’s going to hurt. I’ll fuck it up and leave a scar.”
“I don’t give a damn about a scar.” I grinned at her and half turned to face her. I had plenty of scars on my body, scars from knives and worse littering my chest and abs. She stared at them like she wanted to catalogue each one, like she wanted to understand the pain that had followed them all.
She had no clue what I’d been through and she’d never understand it.
“Come on, Owain. This is stupid.”
“If you care so damn much, there are pills in the kit. Get them out for me.”
She hesitated, but then finally moved with a frustrated grunt. There was a bottle of Percocet at the bottom. She grabbed them, popped off the top, and gave me two.
I dry swallowed them then showed her the wound.
“Get to work, little diamond.”
“Is this another one of your insane tests?’
“Could be, or maybe not. One way to find out.”
“Fuck.” She closed her eyes. The bathroom began to fill with steam from the shower. “Fuck you’re insane. You really are crazy.”
“Sew my arm before you piss me off.”
She cursed again but found the needle and thread in the kit, opened the packaging that kept them sterile, and stared at me.
“Well, walk me through it then.”
I laughed, took a deep breath, and began to give her instructions. By the time she got the thread ready, the pills kicked in, and the first jab into my arm was only mildly excruciating.
She did a shit job. But of course she did. She was still in shock and barely functioning. But the simple task of sewing up my arm wound took her arm off the trauma of what happened long enough to snap her out of it, at least a little bit. She had to stop and start a few times, and I was sure that
