Good.
I hoped it fucking did.
“I know. Just… just wait a little longer, okay? In the meantime, I… I could help you drink.”
I shook my head, turning away from him again. “I don’t want your help. I want to be untied. I won’t drink until then.”
Tobias had gone painfully still at that, swallowed thickly, then lowered the bottle of water back onto the tray. “Very well.”
It wasn’t long after he’d left that I’d heard the faint sounds of an argument coming from somewhere outside the door.
When Tobias next came in, it was to untie me.
I hated the gentleness of his hands. I hated the way he crouched in front of me like kneeling could make any of this less horrifying. I hated that his fingers were careful not to scrape the rope over my skin any more than necessary, and that he looked genuinely distressed when he saw the red marks left behind.
Ben stayed by the door while Tobias worked, which should have made me feel safer. It did not. Ben had been the one holding the rope outside. Ben had been the one who tied the knots. Ben had been the one who looked sorry and did it anyway.
That was apparently a running theme in this house.
People being sorry while they continued doing terrible things.
By the time the ropes were gone, I had expected Tobias to leave, but instead, he had remained crouched in front of me, close enough that I could see the exhaustion shadowing the skin beneath his eyes, and close enough to notice that he had changed out of the wet clothes from earlier but still hadn’t managed to look entirely put together again.
That rattled me.
Tobias was always composed. Even when he was strange, even when he was intense, even when he had been standing beside a dead body with water dripping from his gloves, there had been some terrifying structure to him.
Now, that structure had cracks.
His hair was combed back, but not perfectly. His shirt was clean but wrinkled at the collar and the waist, and there was something in his gaze that made me want to look away because if I looked too long, I might start wondering whether hurting me had actually hurt him.
Which was ridiculous.
He did not get to be hurt by that.
He left after I’d tugged my foot away from him once I deemed his perusal of my ankle had gone on for much longer than necessary, only to come back minutes later with a small first aid kit.
He held it in one hand, paused just inside the door, and asked, “May I take care of your wounds?”
I almost said no on instinct.
The word was already there, sitting sharp on my tongue, ready to cut into him because that was the only weapon I had left. No, you may not. No, you do not get to tie me up and then clean the marks afterward. No, you do not get to turn this into another weird little act of caretaking when the reason I needed care at all was because of you.
But my wrists stung, my right palm had a shallow scrape from where I’d slipped on the wet floor, both of my elbows throbbed from the walls and corners I’d slammed into during the run, and one of my ankles burned where the rope had rubbed during all that useless kicking.
So rather than answering, I gave one stiff, miserable nod and lay back against the pillow he’d brought in earlier.
Tobias sat on the edge of the cot, the first-aid kit balanced open beside him, and began with my wrists. Each time he turned my arm to examine the abraded skin, a muscle in his jaw jumped, and without much else to do, I focused my energy and attention on counting the little movements.
I stayed quiet for the most part, but when he started dabbing antiseptic over the raw places, I couldn’t help but hiss through my teeth.
Tobias froze at the sound, and I snapped, his concern making me want to crawl out of my own skin. “Just get it over with already. Fuck.”
He said nothing to that, which was probably wise.
He moved on to the scrape across my palm, then the smaller cuts along my fingers where I’d caught myself on stone outside. He cleaned each one, applied ointment, and covered them with bandages that quickly grew in number, despite me really not needing more than five at most.
“It doesn’t need that much,” I muttered when he wrapped gauze around a spot that was barely bleeding.
