Page 38 of Bought and Broken

“It’s going to hurt when I take out the glass.”

“I don’t care about the pain!”

“Devon, I’m going to help you, but you need to relax.” I place my hand on her stomach. She grips it with her trembling hand. “It isn’t that bad. Once the glass is out, it’ll stop bleeding. I promise.”

She nods and turns her face away, her eyes squeezed shut. I have no idea how this girl gets through her period each month.

I open the first aid kit and dig around for everything I’ll need. The tweezers, antiseptic, gauze, and tape. Maneuvering the towel so it’s on the bottom of her heel, I grab the tweezers and carefully go in. It isn’t too big or deep. It comes out easily and she hardly flinches.

My brave girl.

With a piece of gauze, I gently touch the area to make sure there aren’t any other shards in there.

“Does it feel okay?”

“Yeah,” she says, sniffling again.

“I’m almost done.”

I press the gauze to her foot for another few seconds, then pull it away and use the antiseptic. Once it’s clean, I put clean gauze and tape over it.

“All set, baby. You want to take a nap?” She shakes her head, and I lean over to run my hand along her cheek. “You want to watch a movie?”

“Clean up the blood first, p-please.”

“Movie theatre is upstairs.”

I stand and lift her up bridal style. She doesn’t hesitate to wrap her arms around my neck, making me remember all the times she did it when we were younger.

“You would have a theatre in here,” she comments halfway up the stairs.

I smirk to myself but don’t respond. Once we’re in the theatre, I put her on the couch.

“I’ll be right back.”

I head downstairs to clean up the blood. Though someone will be up here to take care of it soon, I want to make sure it’s clean in case Devon has to come down here for anything. Once I’m done with that, I toss the towels in the trash and go to her room to grab a blanket and pillow from her bed. She’s already messing with the remote when I get back.

I recline her part of the couch and get her comfortable and tucked in. Then I take the remote from her and plop onto the other side.

“I am not watching The Notebook or Titanic,” I say.

“Good, because I want something funny.”

Without thinking about it, I navigate through the movies and put on Spy.

Comedy movies are one of our favorites. It was our go-to, except the times she forced me into the romance movies so she could cry and hug me. At the time, I thought it was just an excuse to hold me. Now, I’m not so sure.

“Oh, I haven’t seen this one,” she says, settling into the couch.

“It’s been a while, but I remember it being funny.”

The movie starts up, so I put the remote down and lean back.

“Tate?” I glance at Devon to find her looking at me. “Thank you,” she whispers.

I nod, not knowing what to say. A “you’re welcome” or “no problem” doesn’t feel right. Not when I still feel shitty for letting her go through that at the party…

Today was simple. She calmed down easily because I was there to talk her through it. How long was she freaking out at the party? Not only because of the blood, but because it was her brother’s blood.

---