Page 112 of Prized Possession

“Help yourself to a drink,” I reply sarcastically.

Mickey lets out a laugh. “You’re hardly a great host. You’d never have offered me one.”

“Well, I don’t want you to feel welcome here,” I snap, which just makes him laugh more.

“So, Miles tells me you got yourself stabbed.”

I scowl at him, grinding my teeth together so hard, I’m surprised one hasn’t snapped. “It’s not like I did it on purpose.”

“And yet, you still have a hole in your side.”

He nods towards where I’m holding the towel, which is now stained red.

Although it’s slowing down, I’m losing more than I’d like, which is probably why I’m starting to feel a little lightheaded. I must sway a little, as Mickey notices straightaway.

“Will you sit the fuck down before you collapse, please. I’m not picking your heavy arse up off the floor,” Mickey snaps, pointing towards one of the dining chairs.

With a grumble, I shuffle over and take the chair he pointed to. “I see your bedside manner hasn’t improved.”

“You pay me to keep you alive, not to be nice to you,” he retorts with a cheesy grin.

He places his medical bag on the table beside me, opening it up to rummage through for the supplies he needs.

“So, if I pay you more, will you stop acting like a dick?” I ask.

He pauses for a second, cocking his head to the side, making a big deal of showing that he’s thinking about it, before quickly saying, “Nah. It’s the only fun part of my job.”

“Arsehole,” I chunter, which makes him laugh again.

“Lie down on the dining table and let me take a look at these wounds,” he says, moving his bag off the table onto one of the chairs.

“Do we have to do this on my table? It’s where I eat,” I grumble, but Mickey just shakes his head.

“Unless you have a medical gurney hidden away here, like I asked you to buy, this is the best place.”

“What about the bed?” I ask, ignoring his obvious dig that I, in fact, did not buy the hospital equipment he requested.

Mickey shakes head. “It’s too low down and soft. So unless you want to goto my clinic, where I have a proper gurney, and all the supplies I’ll need, you’ll have to make do here.”

“Fine,” I snap, wincing as I climb onto the table.

Mickey gets to work quickly. First, he assesses all of my body, cataloguing any injuries, and then he sets up a machine to monitor my observations. Once he has all the information he needs, he takes a better look at the wound on my side.

“This one is deep. It’ll need stitches,” he says, as I scrunch my eyes closed, trying to breathe through the pain that comes with him prodding the hole.

“That’s what I said.” My eyes fly open when I hear Chloe’s soft voice from behind me.

I look around to see her leaning against the wall, staring at me with that same worried look on her face.

Her wet hair has been pulled up into a messy bun on the top of her head, and I take a moment to be grateful that she’s wearing a pair of pyjama trousers instead of those shorts she usually teases me with.

“Well, who do we have here?” Mickey asks, wiggling his eyebrows as he stares at Chloe in a way that makes me want to stab him with his own scalpel.

“I’m Chloe,” she says shyly, moving over to stand beside me. “How is he doing? He lost quite a lot of blood.”

Her gaze roams over my body, stopping on my stomach wound, which Mickey is currently cleaning with antiseptic. Her eyes land on where my sweatpants are hanging low on my hips, showing off the trail of hair that leads below my waistband, and I see her gulp.

I have to think about the most boring things imaginable, recounting as many mind-numbing statistics as I can from my last finance meeting, just to stop myself from getting hard. Mickey will never let me live it down if I do.

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