Page 18 of Break for Me

He nodded toward the toilet and reached behind him for a small black bag that sat on the vanity.

“Um, yeah,” I said and hesitated. “Whatever that’s for, no.”

He stepped in front of me to block my path to the door. “I wasn’t asking.”

“You know, that’s quickly becoming my least favorite set of words in the English language.”

“Then learn how to fucking listen and I won’t have to keep saying it.”

He took another step toward me and I realized quickly that there wasn’t enough space in this little bathroom for it to be comfortable if he got any closer. I went to the toilet and slammed the lid down to sit on it and wait.

“Does the attitude have to ooze out of every move you make?” He asked. “Do you have any control over it?”

“Must come naturally when you’re around.”

My throat closed up entirely when he smiled at that. He dropped to a knee directly in front of me and sat the bag on the floor beside him. He reached out toward my left leg, but I immediately squeezed my thighs together and shifted to sit sideways to stay just out of his reach. He let out a very impatient sigh before he looked up to my face.

Fuck it all. I was jealous of those eyes again.

“Can you stop being a stubborn child for maybe ten minutes so I can help you?” He asked.

“Probably not.”

He sighed again and put his other knee on the floor to sit back on his heels. He held that annoyed stare straight at my face while he raised a single finger to tap it against his knee, telling me to put my left foot there. I shook my head at him.

“I’ll use that phrase again,” he threatened. “You might want to stop chewing on your lip, too. I won’t be able to fix that if you fuck it up.”

Shit. I hadn’t even noticed I was holding my bottom lip hostage between my teeth.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. I sighed and shifted back around to place my foot on his knee, where he was still impatiently tapping that stupid finger. Both my knees were bleeding from the several falls I’d taken, but they weren’t terrible. My shins ached and there were small cuts across both. I could feel a scrape across my right cheek but I hadn’t touched it or even looked in a mirror yet to find out how bad the rest of my face might be. The one that held my attention was the deep gash that started on the inside of my left ankle bone and ran down the inside of my foot toward my toes. The inside of my foot and ankle catching on a jagged rock was my downfall. I wouldn’t have even considered turning back for the parking lot if that hadn’t happened. I watched him take my foot in both hands to turn it so he could look closer at the wound. Each thumb went to the outer edges of the gash and he separated the skin ever so slightly. I hissed and tried to rip my whole leg back away from him, but he caught my foot from underneath and held it there. He sighed and looked at me again.

“I need to stitch it.”

“No. Thank you though.”

“Amusing. Now you know how to be polite?”

“It was disingenuous.”

He laughed and ran his free hand over his face.

“Let me help you,” he tried again.

“Why?” I asked. “Why would you help me? I will run again. I would think you’d want to do anything in your power to make that harder on me.”

He smiled again and started searching through the bag. He pulled out a placemat of sorts and started laying out syringes, sutures, and various tools that made my mouth go dry.

“I’m under the impression that I might not be the only one out here who’s trying to cash in on the payday that you’re worth, Fancy Face. If trouble finds us, I might need you to be able to run from it with me.”

I stared at him for a long few seconds, and he waited with more patience than I would’ve guessed he had while he watched me try to come to a decision. Part of me couldn’t come to a clear choice because I couldn’t even believe he seemed to be giving me a choice at all. I finally nodded at him.

“Scoot up here,” he said. “I can numb it before I do the stitches, but that injection is going to hurt like a bitch. Get closer so you can hold onto me.”

I slid up to the edge of the toilet until I was uncomfortably close to him and suddenly very aware again that I was only wrapped in a towel.

“I’m going to trust you to just sit here while I do this,” he said and stopped to look right into my eyes. “You’re not going to try to take advantage of this and fight back now. It won’t work. And I will hurt you if you try it now.”

I felt like somebody poured ice water down my spine with the way that he glared right through me.

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