I cut Killian's t-shirt from the hem to the collar. The wet fabric parts with a tearing sound that seems too loud in the quiet house. I peel the cotton away from his skin.
I stop.
I have seen Killian Kavanagh shirtless once. In the gym. From the doorway. Through the filter of an assessment. I cataloged the muscle density, the power output, the threat level.
I didn't see the map.
His torso is a landscape of violence.
A knotted, white ridge of a knife wound cuts across his left pectoral muscle—old, jagged, healed without stitches. A circulardepression below the right collarbone—gunshot, through-and-through, the skin puckered around the scar like a crater. A lattice of thin, pale lines across both forearms that look like defensive wounds from a blade.
And on his right shoulder, a cluster of small, round burn marks.
Cigarette burns.
They are evenly spaced. Deliberate. Geometric. The skin has stretched around them as he grew, which means he was a child when they happened.
I stare at the burns. The data assembles in my mind, unwanted and horrifying. Someone held him down. Someone used him as an ashtray. Someone taught him that pain was a language before he could even speak it.
My da stood me in the garden and told me to swing until I couldn't lift my arms.
I force myself to look away. The rage flaring in my chest is useless. It won't stop the bleeding.
Focus. The wound.
I rip open a saline pouch. "This is going to be cold," I whisper, though he can't hear me.
I flush the laceration. The water runs pink over his skin, washing away the dried blood and the road grit. Killian groans, a low, guttural sound deep in his throat. His brow furrows, muscles twitching, but he doesn't wake.
The water clears the view. I lean in close. The wound channel goes deep—into the external oblique muscle, carving a paththrough the red meat of him. But the fascia underneath is intact. It missed the spleen. It missed the bowel.
No arterial spray. No organ involvement.
He isn't going to die. Not if I close it.
I draw the lidocaine into the syringe. My hands are steady. My hands are always steady; it is the one thing I can control when the world is burning down. I check the needle for air bubbles, a reflex from a lifetime of watching doctors work.
I pinch the skin at the top of the wound. I insert the needle.
I inject the local anesthetic along the edges of the laceration, moving in small, precise increments. The flesh ripples under the needle. Killian flinches with every puncture, his abdominal muscles contracting hard under my hand.
"Stay still," I murmur. "Stay with me."
I grab a packet of hemostatic gauze. I have to pack the wound before I stitch it to ensure the bleeding inside the channel stops. I push the gauze into the tear with my index finger.
The sensation hits me like a physical blow.
I am inside him.
My finger slides into the warm, wet channel of torn muscle. It is tight, hot, and shockingly intimate. It is closer than we were in the kitchen. It is closer than we were in the container. I am touching the raw, red reality of his life. I am holding his body together with my hands.
The heat of him radiates up my arm.
I pack it tight. The blood flow slows, the QuickClot doing its job.
I open the suture kit. I grab the needle driver and clamp it onto the curved surgical needle.
I start to stitch.
