“Sometime I will,” I assured him, standing up and straightening out my clothes. “But not tonight. Would you please go back to sleep?”
“I’m not tired.”
“Go to sleep, Kevin.” I changed my tone to one he would recognize and yield to. “If you can’t sleep, lie there with your eyes closed until you do.”
He pursed his lips and angled a glare so sharp at me, I wondered if I was going to be the one who needed stitches. I had never been one to use my authority that way, but I was on a time crunch. This thing with Kevin would hold, and the sooner he let me out of the house, the sooner I could come back and tell him it hadn’t even been a big deal.
With much noise and drama, Kevin flung himself down onto his back, squeezing his eyes closed and tipping his chin in the most defiant expression I’d ever seen.
“I love you,” I told him, hesitating in the doorway.
“I’m sleeping,” he said, “like you told me.”
“Well, I still love you.”
I would deal with the lie later.
On my way out, I slipped into the playroom. I didn’t know what it said about me as a person that I had a bag of medical supplies in the place I most liked to fuck my boyfriend, but…much like Foster, we all had our secrets. I checked my pockets for my phone and my keys, checked the bag to make sure everything I needed was in there, then locked up and made my way to the parking garage.
Foster lived in an expensive part of town, all white picket fences and night-blooming jasmine, and it was just shy of three in the morning when I pulled alongside the curb in front of his house. The front gate was open and the lights were on, but I couldn’t see anything through the frosted glass door. In my hurry to get out of the house while calming Kevin down, I’d forgotten my spare keys, so I let myself through the back gate.
I climbed the steps onto Foster’s back deck and frowned, pulling open the slider. This glass wasn’t frosted and it looked like a body had exploded in his kitchen. There was bloodeverywhere. Droplets leading from his front door onto the white tiled floor, and a pair of legs stuck out from behind the kitchen island. At the sound of the door, Foster stood up, shirtless, with bloody hands.
“What the fuck, Foster?” I walked around the island and dropped my bag on the tile, narrowly missing a gun that one of the two men had discarded.
“I’ll answer all your questions later.” He gave me a desperate look, knit brows and downturned mouth. “Well… most.”
Kevin was right. This was much more than stitches. This was…Foster had just involved me with something I had no business with, but I was here and there was no point in leaving without helping. I had, after all, taken an oath.
“I need clean towels, all of them.” I squatted down and unzipped my bag. “Alcohol. Hot water.”
Foster flipped on the taps and then disappeared down the hallway. He dropped a stack of towels at my feet and then walked out of the kitchen, leaving me with Sage.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, giving the bloody man on the floor a onceover. His face was bruised, his nose probably broken, but the glaring issue was the steady fountain of blood pouring out of a stab wound on his side. It wasn’t gushing, but judging by the pool of red beneath him, he’d been bleeding for a while.I remembered him now, seeing him at the auction, and I could tell he’d lost a lot of blood, the pallor of his face nearly white as the sheets I’d left my husband in.
“Like I got stabbed,” he grunted, lashes fluttering.
“Well.” I peeled away what looked to be Foster’s crumpled up t-shirt and a hand towel, both soaked in blood. “You have.”
He chuckled and grimaced in pain. “You got here just in time,” he rasped. “I think Golden was about to put a bullet in me.”
I wasn’t sure if that would have been deserved, so I said nothing. Instead, I set to getting Sage cleaned up so I could get a better look at his wounds. The stab wound looked a lot better once I’d cleared it of blood. It was wide, but not deep, which was good for him. I stitched him up and bandaged his side, then turned my attention to his face.
Sage was barely conscious, but he was breathing steadily while I worked on him. With Foster’s last clean towel, I wiped the dried blood from his face, finding new and old wounds alike that had been torn open by the assault. I wanted to know if Foster had done this to him, if my friend had been the one, but I didn’t have it in me to ask.
There were so many feelings inside of me to make sense of, resentment and anger bubbling up to the top. Foster had taken things one step too far when he called me to come get involved with this. I was a doctor. I had a job at a hospital. I wasn’t some late night phone call meant to stitch up mafiosos and drug dealers. I didn’t know which Foster was, and I didn’t know which Sage was.
I didn’t want to.
And I didn’t want to admit that Kevin had been right.
“Is he going to live?” Foster asked from the dining room.
“Probably. He needs to rest. And he should probably see a plastic surgeon for his nose.” I stood up, using the least bloodied towel to wipe my hands.
“No,” Sage grunted.
“Whatever.” The anger threatened to boil over. I stepped over Sage’s body and started to wash my hands, using Foster’s hand soap and dish soap at the same time like I was scrubbing in. There was blood under my fingernails and in the creases of my palm that had already started to dry.
