Page 23 of Until Death Parts Us

I only stop watching him when he begins stitching me up, because I close my eyes and grunt through the pain until he’s done.

Then he puts some sterile dressing on top and moves to the burns.

“It’s his fucking initials,” I tell him. “I can’t have his initials on me, Quin.”

He looks into my eyes. “What do you want me to do?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

Quin inspects them. They still hurt like a motherfucker.

“I’m not going to do anything now and risk making it worse. You could get an infection. You’ll have to let them heal and then we can see about getting a tattoo over them.”

“Fuck!”

He grabs the aloe cream from the first aid kit and begins dealing with them. Once he’s done, he gives me ibuprofen and water, and then gets up to take off my shoes and remove my pants. After cleaning the cut on my leg, he’s able to just use butterfly stitches for the wound before covering it up with gauze.

“We may need to figure out how to get you antibiotics anyway. Just in case.”

I swallow down the pills. “We’ll see. We can’t do it here anyway. We don’t need the questions when they start finding bodies. We need to get home.”

His lips twitch but he doesn’t say anything. “Think you can manage to stitch me up?”

“Yeah.”

We don’t say anything for a while, but when I’m halfway through, I finally speak up.

“Thanks—”

“Don’t,” he says, cutting me off. “I can’t talk about it right now.”

I press my lips together, my eyes flickering up to his. “Okay.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

QUIN

As tired aswe both are, I don’t have time to sleep. Kaspian passed out shortly after stitching me up, so I went through the cabin and grabbed all of our belongings and took them to the RV.

I put on my gloves and then I hopped into the truck I stole and drove it back down to the cabin it was parked by before walking back. There’s still nobody out and about yet, and I’d like to leave before the area is active again.

I doubt anyone will go to Tim’s cabin anytime soon. Out here, people are doing their own thing. Nobody will check on it until the owner needs to rent it out to someone else, or when payment doesn’t come through for their allotted stay.

The bodies in the woods shouldn’t be found right away either. It’s not like they were on a known path. We have enough time to flee the state before people are aware there are four bodies in the area.

Once inside, I rouse Kaspian and tell him we have to leave.

“Right now?” he asks groggily.

“Yes. The sun’s not up yet. We need to get on the road.”

He hisses when he sits up, clutching at his bandaged stomach. “Do we have more pain meds?”

“In the RV. You need some food in your system though.”

“Okay. Let’s go.”

I help him up, assisting in putting on some loose-fitting sweats and shoes before draping a jacket around his shoulders before we head outside.

---