Grabbing the cotton balls and other various first aid items I’ve gathered from the bathroom, I soak them in alcohol to clean Ozzy’s wound, but he’s only rolled up his sleeve.
I see the graze on his bicep, but I have no clue how many times he’s been shot.
Getting in front of him, I stare into his chest when I say, “Take your shirt off.”
Nothing.
I’m forced to glance up, as if this isn’t a big fucking deal, but it is.
Ozzy doesn’t flaunt. And he sure as fuck can barely tolerate me touching him, let alone possibly seeing him shirtless.
Not entirely sure if the odds will ever present themselves again, and I can’t say I’m entirely displeased by it minus the gunshot wound, of course.
Meanwhile, Ozzy just vacantly stares at me. Which does nothing for my running mind. I want to talk to Hot Rod about everything, but I can’t. I just fucked my best friend, and we barely said shit-all to each other.
And I still “buried” him.
How fucked up is that? What the fuck happened? And why was I told he was dead?
“Was it just your arm?” I solicit with a raised brow through my thoughts and receive nothing back from Ozzy in return. “Well, I need to check. And that requires a lack of material covering your body.”
Nothing.
“Ozzy,” I lightly reprimand. “I’m tired. Do I need to take mine off, too, so you feel more comfortable or…?”
He grunts at that, and then, I swear to God, he actually rolls his fucking eyes at me.
His fingers clasp around the hem of his black tee, still soaked and stained in his blood, before he slowly begins to remove his shirt with one hand and struggles a bit.
I step closer. “Here, let me help you, okay?”
Hesitating, I wait for a sign he doesn’t want the assistance, but it never comes. So I don’t wait for it to barrel out of his mouth and carefully begin to hoist the cotton material up his body.
“Don’t move your right arm,” I order. “I can get it off.”
Black ink comes into view against hard, smooth skin, covering some of his torso, and then his chest, as I try to focus on my task.
However, I can’t help but fucking stare at his lean muscles the higher I work his shirt. He’s more tatted than Levi. Except the skin around his heart is free of any pigment.
Ozzy slowly pulls his left arm out of his shirt, giving me another landscape of ink over the pieces of flesh I’ve never seen before.
Swallowing, I carefully pull the rest of the material over his head and then, as gently as I can, pull at the sleeve to keep the fabric from brushing up against the contusion that comes on full display.
It appears like a flesh wound on his shoulder as well, but it’s red around the edges, appearing slightly infected and irritated.
This is going to hurt.
Discarding his shirt to the floor, I take one necessary step between his spread thighs and practically choke on an inhale.
My skin promptly heats at our proximity, and I try my absolute best to study only his wound andnothis naked chest in front of me.
“Maybe I should give you some aspirin first,” I surmise evenly, taking a small step back. I obviously need to gather my damn self before I can do this, and it’s oddly and severely pathetic that I’m struggling. “This isn’t going to feel very?—”
“Do it,” he orders gruffly, sending a violent shiver down my arms and it brings merightback to that night.
Our first night.
The one when we met, and he was staring down a double-barrel shotgun.
