A bloody boot print, right in the middle of my carpet.
My chest clenches as a thousand scenarios run through my mind. If it were a couple of weeks ago, I would have run. Nothing would have been worth risking the chance of finding an intruder in my home, and running is always the safest course of action.
But not anymore. Because if there is an intruder, it’s probably someone who came for Tadhg, and I can’t leave him here alone. And if he’s the only one here, then that blood is his, and it’s possible that all my frantic worrying about his mental health has been for nothing, and I’m already too late.
Either way, my feet carry me deeper into the apartment before I have the chance to think any better of it.
I don’t try to pick up a weapon. If there’s someone in here, I’m not winning in a fight against them. Just like when Patrick first showed up, I have to rely on my wits, my charm, and sheer fucking luck to get me through whatever’s coming next.
The bloody footprints disappear behind the bathroom door. I can’t even decide what I want to find the least.
I just need him to be alive. Whatever else is happening, I can deal with. As long as he’s still alive.
Please.
I take one shaky breath before I twist the handle and open the door. It gives easily and inside isn’t exactly any of the scenarios I was mentally preparing myself for.
Tadhg is there. He’s covered in blood, and it’s immediately obvious that he’s the one who left the trail of prints. There’s no one else here. And although he’s covered in blood, he’s also standing over the sink, and I can’t see anything that immediately looks like a wound.
His back is bowed, his head lowered, and I don’t think he’s noticed that I opened the door. I don’t want to startle him more than I have to, so I keep my distance and say his name softly a few times.
Finally, as I get louder each time, one of them snaps through whatever is pulling his focus. He jerks away from the sink, looking at me in the mirror for a second before whirling around to take me in.
“Bambi?”
His head whips from side to side, like he’s forgotten where he is. I take a step toward him, one hand outstretched, treating him like the wild animal he’s embodying right now.
“Shh, it’s okay. It’s me. There’s no one else here. What happened?”
That was dumb. He’s clearly not in question-answering mode, but my brain is kicking up a million of them and I couldn’t stop that one from spilling out.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he says, his voice hoarse and barely louder than a whisper.
“What? No, Tadhg, look at me.”
Feeling more confident he’s not about to snap, I take hold of his arms, maneuvering him until he’s fully facing me, and then I grab his face to keep his focus. There’s dried blood flaking over his cheek and chin, but that’s not important right now.
“Are. You. Hurt?”
He just snorts and shakes his head, moving my hands with him. When I stay stuck to him, waiting for more information, he reaches up and knocks my hands away with more force than I was expecting.
“You shouldn’t touch me.”
He won’t meet my eyes as he says it. Everything he says sounds so hollow and numb. I feel like I’m not even talking to my brother right now but some shadow-version of him. Even more than when he first came to me and was out of his head with feverish delirium.
“Ok,” I say quietly, more to myself than to him. “Ok. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Because I’m not stupid, and I don’t know exactly what happened to him, but I can put together the shape of it.
I reach for his shirt to peel it off him, but he flinches away. We don’t have time to go through all the rounds of his self-loathing right now, though. I move in closer, trapping him against the sink with my body and holding his gaze with mine.
My fingers find the hem of his shirt and I pull it upward. If he wants me to leave him alone, he’s going to have to hurt me, and I know that’s where he draws the line.
He seems to realize the same thing, because he goes limp in my hands. He stands there, hanging from invisible strings, and lets me strip him down.
When I have his bloody shirt in my hands, it occurs to me that I need to put this somewhere. Preferably somewhere that’s not going to transfer evidence all over my apartment. Just in case whoever was bleeding all over my stepbrother wasn’t a willing participant…
There are garbage bags under the sink, and I’m able to kick open the cabinet door and fish them out with my foot, without getting my bloody fingerprints anywhere. I upend the roll, spreading the plastic all over the floor around us to catch as much debris as possible, before tearing one off to put his clothes into.
