A light in the hallway flipped on and a backlit silhouette appeared in the doorway. I was naked, I was unarmed, and I prayed to God it was Golden there and not someone who’d shown up to finish the job. I barely recalled collapsing in his arms after getting stabbed at the bar, and everything after that was a complete blur.
“You take advantage of me, Golden?” I croaked, my voice cracking. I cleared my throat.
The light in the bedroom switched on, a ceiling light attached to a fan that started to whir. The bulbs weren’t bright, but the change from darkness was still jarring. I closed my eyes, blinking slowly until I didn’t feel like knives were being gouged into my eyeballs.
“I saved your life,” he said.
“You patched me up?”
“I made a call.” He moved to the foot of the bed before he stopped, folding his arms over his chest and giving me a onceover.
“Do I owe someone?” I shifted my weight with another flinch. I hoped I didn’t look as bad as I felt. The only reason I was convinced I hadn’t been run over by a steamroller was because I could physically see my body wasn’t flat.
I balled my fists, my right hand taking a little more work to get into the familiar position. I raised my hand and examined my knuckles, also bloody and bruised like the rest of me.
“You owe me.”
I managed a painful laugh. “I’m sure I can figure out how to get that favor off the books.”
“Oh, I doubt that,” he said with a tired sigh.
“How long have I been here?”
“Too long.” Golden closed the space between us, sliding an arm around my back and hauling me out of the bed with little preamble.
“Fuck!” I slipped out of his hold, catching myself on the edge of the mattress. He gave me an annoyed look. “Give a guy a little warning, would ya?”
“We’re getting up,” he said, repositioning himself and pulling me toward him.
“Why?” I clutched at him, at my bandage.
“Because you got blood all over my sheets.”
I glanced behind me at the bed I’d soiled, then gave a quick look around the room. The place was pretty barren—a basic bed with white sheets, a dresser across the room with a small TV sitting on top of it, a generic piece of art with the Vincent Thomas bridge lit up above the bed, and a small window with navy blue curtains and white horizontal blinds.
“This isn’t your room,” I guessed.
“Clearly not.”
Golden helped me toward the hallway, being a little less careful than I would have preferred. The lights in the hallway were brighter, and the light in the bathroom even worse.
“I want to see your room,” I told him.
“I want you to be quiet.” He sat me on the closed lid of his toilet before busying himself with getting a bath drawn.
I obliged him while the tub filled.
Golden swished his hand in the water, then flicked the drops off his finger. “Don’t move,” he ordered, like he was in charge.
“Oh, Golden.” I leaned back against the tank of the toilet and closed my eyes, too fatigued to fight with him. “I’m not going anywhere.”
While he was gone, I focused on breathing, the way the pain rattled my ribs with every breath. I dragged my fingers up the right side of my rib cage, testing the bones and finding them sore, but intact. I couldn’t check the other side because of the giant bandage, but I hedged a bet it was holding my organs in place so I didn’t want to peel it back and check.
Golden came back, and I forced my eyes into slits so I could see him. He had a plastic grocery bag in one hand and a roll of tape in the other. I had the fleeting thought he could kill me. He could slip the bag over my head, tape it around my neck, and wait for me to breathe through all the oxygen I had. Judging by the way he hesitated, the plastic crinkling in his hand, he had the same thought.
I was too tired to care.
“You gonna kill me, Golden? Finish the job blondie started?”
