The word is wrapped in her usual delicate voice, but I don’t know why it sounds different, a firm demand with a deceiving tremble.
I smirk, dragging a bar stool over and dropping into it. “Bossy,” I murmur, watching the corner of her lips battle to contain a smile, her eyes focused on her cell in front of her.
My heart rate picks up as I go into a trance, matching the same tempo I’d get if I started a cardio session, or if we go darker, the same way it feels when I’ve been tasked with killing a piece of shit. Exhilaration.
An American voice breaks the silence, Indie’s eyes glued to the phone as she listens attentively, subtly nodding along before rummaging through the plastic box.
When she pulls out what she needs, she looks up at me, clearing her throat. “I’m assuming you won’t go to the hospital if you’re not gonna let me call an ambulance.”
I shake my head gently. “No, you look like you’ve got all the right tools there, Nurse Kent.”
This time, my heart all but falls out my ass as she bites her lip, rolling her eyes as the softest giggle leaves her.
My chest constricts again.
“Well then, I need to clean your cut first.”
She walks over to me, wetting a cotton pad as the antiseptic liquid spills out with the tremble in her hand. I reach both mine out, steadying her hold.
Electricity sparks like a live wire up from my palms to my neck as I hold her, and it feels like neither of us is breathing, or maybe it’s just me.
I could swear the fucking world has stopped spinning.
My gaze fixates on her throat, watching her swallow as she lifts her hand. “This might sting a little.”
“It’s okay,” I answer, keeping my eyes on her as she reaches forward, touch as gentle as the brush of a butterfly’s wings, mirroring the same ones that seem to have erupted in my chest.
She glides the material down my face, eyes glancing over at mine every so often. She seems nervous, and come to think about it, she’s been acting like that for the past year.
We’ve been friends since I was thirteen, but the older we got, the more she became interesting to me. I put it down to teenage hormones, but in the last thirty minutes, I swear they’ve fucking intensified, to the point my heart feels like it won’t beat a normal rhythm again.
“I think you have a concussion.”
“Huh?” I mumble, not realising she’d moved away, discarding the blood-soaked material as she waits for my answer.
“Well, you crashed and hit your head. You ran across the lawn like someone drunk off their ass, then bumped your head from falling.” She drags in oxygen as she speeds through the sentence. “Google says you might have a concussion.”
I drag a hand through my hair. “I just banged my head. I’ll be good.”
She laughs,again.
Fuck, this girl’s doing weird shit to me with a mere laugh, and I’ve heard it a thousand times.
“You have a bruise forming on the side of your face, Saint. Answer these questions for me,” she says, walking back towards her phone, and the distance of her leaves me feeling cold.
“Do you have slurred speech?”
“No.”
She frowns. “Maybe you’d like to say a longer sentence so I can judge that?”
I wipe away the smile as I drag my hand down my mouth. “No, nurse Kent. I don’t have slurred speech.”
A subtle, but undeniable blush creeps up her cheeks, and she immediately glances back down at her phone. “Do you have a headache? If so, has it gotten worse?”
“Yes, but it’s not that bad.”
She rolls her eyes, shaking her head in exasperation.
