Page 23 of Riff

“He’s got better taste in women’s clothes than I do,” I said, getting a ghost of a smile out of her as I came toward her bed with the first aid kit. “Can I?” I asked, waving toward her covered ankle.

She gave me a tight nod, and I felt like I was doing everything wrong as she stiffened while I removed her sock, then pushed up her pant leg.

It wasn’t pretty, but it didn’t look as bad now that she’d managed to wash all the dirt out of it. It was raw in places, but the majority of the discoloration looked to be from old, healed scars from the shackle.

Still, I took care with cleaning it out, not wanting to risk any sort of infection.

“I need to talk to you about something,” I said, glance cutting up to hers, finding her already watching me.

“Okay,” she said, sounding tense.

“It’s about the next steps.”

CHAPTER SIX

Vienna

I would never, ever take a hot shower for granted again. Hell, I wouldn’t take running water for granted again. Soap. Toothpaste. A hairbrush. All the things that made you feel human.

I knew I was hogging all the hot water, but I couldn’t seem to bring myself to care as I scrubbed and scrubbed at my skin with the woodsy-smelling soap Riff had lent me.

The dirt was all off of me after the second or third scrub, but I kept scraping at my skin. Four, five, six, seven times, wishing I could get the feel of him off of me.

Eventually, I had to fight back those thoughts just to be able to stop scrubbing before I made myself raw.

Then I brushed and brushed and brushed my teeth and hair before slathering on lotion and lip balm that immediately burned, thanks to how chapped they were.

And, finally, I got into new, warm, soft clothes that completely swallowed me up.

That still didn’t feel like enough, though. So when I found more layers in the bags Raff provided, I slipped those on too. And the blanket. Before, finally, I felt a little more, I don’t know, safe.

I knew Riff was going to need to talk to me eventually. When he’d left me to go make his phone call, it had been all I could think about.

What was he going to do with me now?

Would he just drive me to the next town, drop me off, and wish me well?

My heart twisted at that thought.

Being left.

Being alone.

Being unprotected again.

“Okay,” I said as he carefully dabbed ointment around my ankle with a cotton swab.

“You don’t have to talk about it with me,” he started, reaching for a roll of gauze, then carefully pressing it over the ointment. “But I know… things happened to you. And that you might want to talk to the police about that, get a report filed, get them—“

My head was already shaking the second he mentioned cops, but he finally seemed to notice the motion and glanced up.

“No?” he asked.

“No. No, I don’t… no.”

I knew what that involved. I’d had a friend in high school who’d been assaulted by two boys at a party when she’d been only seventeen.

The police had asked horrible questions about what she’d been wearing, how much she’d been drinking, what she may have said to the boys to lead them on.

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