Page 11 of Scorpion

“I can deal with it myself.” It isn’t the first time I’ve had to treat cuts that needed stitches, antibiotics, and some damn good painkiller.

“You need stitches.” He glances around, then opens one of the drawers and holds up the emergency sewing kit. Has he been here before? “Unless you want regular cotton sewn into your skin.”

I narrow my eyes at him.

Fuck it. I’ll comply only because I can’t afford to replace my pillow and bedsheets.

The chair creaks beneath my weight, and it’s sad that I have to hold back a sigh of relief.

“Do you have strong painkillers?” Mathijs asks, following behind me with the little med kit.

I crack open the beer bottle using the edge of the wooden table, then hold up the drink in answer.

The muscle in his jaw twitches, but he says nothing as I down two-thirds of it in one go. It tastes like flavored dirt, and the added metallic tang doesn’t do it any favors.

Mathijs is methodical in the way he lays out his supplies, going so far as disinfecting the table before placing a sheet on it. The kit has everything he needs in it, from Panadol that he makes me take with water, to gauze, to tools he needs to stitch my forehead back together.

I have no way to prove it, or the words to ask, but I’m certain he planned for me to leave the ring broken. It’s the only way to explain why he’s carrying around the kit with him.

Slipping his hands into a pair of medical-grade gloves, he turns to me with a wipe and a cotton ball doused in iodine.

“This is going to hurt.”

I lift a shoulder. “I’m used to it.”

His jaw feathers again. I manage to hold back any reaction to the sting that hits my forehead beyond a shaky inhale. The burn is almost relaxing.

Controlled pain. It’s the best kind.

I finish my drink off then start on the other as he grabs the threaded needle and a pair of forceps. My fingers curl around my seat, and I grunt when the point pierces my skin. He doesn’t react, green eyes focused on my bleeding flesh, working quickly with practiced ease.

For the briefest moment, I can picture how he would light up every time he was around animals. If life gave him a family with different expectations, he’d be wearing scrubs and working as a vet, not wearing a suit, stitching someone up after an underground street fight.

I hiss when the needle punctures flesh again. “You know how to sew.” Not a question, but something to fill the tense silence.

“You were slower than usual tonight.”

My eyes snap up to his. “Than usual?”

Mathijs doesn’t answer.

He’s seen me fight? How many times? Have I become so far removed from reality that I’ve stopped doing a proper scan of the crowd? Fuck. What’s the point of knowing where the exits are when I have no idea where the danger is?

Part of me wants to know why he hasn’t approached me sooner. For years, I’ve known that there wouldn’t be a day that I’m ready to face him after leaving him behind. Maybe he knows it too.

I jolt, not expecting the next stitch. Sucking in a sharp breath, I stare at the ground. “You haven’t asked me why I left.”

“I have many questions, Lieverd,” he says softly. Darling. My breath catches. “That isn’t the one that keeps me up at night.”

Keeps. Not kept.

The boulder in my throat doubles in size and doesn’t go away when I swallow.

Why did you leave without me? Why didn’t you come to me first? Why haven’t you contacted me over all these years? Why didn’t you say goodbye?

This time, I say nothing.

I don’t feel the last stitch or the tightening as he ties it off. The cool touch of an alcohol wipe feels a mile away, and I barely hear his final words to me or the creak of the floor with his departure.

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