I follow his gaze to the hand holding my phone. It looks fine. A little shaky, but fine. “What about it?”
He lets out a slow breath. “Your other hand.”
I lift my left hand. For a second, my brain doesn’t process what it’s seeing. A smear of crimson across my palm, a few bright drops of it on the countertop. It’s like looking at a picture of someone else’s injury.
Then I flex my fingers, and a web of sharp, stinging pain brings it all into focus.
It’s my blood. My pain.
“Oh,” I say, the sound small and distant. “Guess I landed on some glass.”
Casey reaches across the table and grabs my wrist.
“Come,” he says. “We need to clean those out.”
I want to argue—my default setting—but his face is pale, and his voice is just this side of cracking, so I go without fuss.
In the bathroom mirror, I catch my reflection and immediately wish I hadn’t. Hair everywhere, skin shiny with dried sweat. But my knees are the real horror show—a raw mess of gravel and blood, the bruises already blooming dark at the edges.
I turn on the faucet and stick my hands under, watching the water go pink, then clear.
Casey hovers, like I might bleed out if he leaves me alone. I fight the urge to hide my hand behind my back, because I don’t want to seem more fragile than I already do, but I guess the point is moot when my legs look like they’ve gone a couple rounds with a cheese grater.
Eventually, his hero complex takes over, and he takes my hands gently—way too gently—inspecting them.
Once he’s certain they’re clean, glass and gravel-free, he takes a dab of Neosporin and dabs it over the cuts.
This angle gives me an up close view of his throat, at the raw, bruised handprint that circles it.
Guilt makes my stomach twist into a knot.
If I hadn’t forgotten my bag. If I hadn’t wanted pizza. If I had just listened to every alarm bell screaming at me to stay away from that place?—
Casey would be fine right now.
“You want me to get some ice for that?”
He shrugs. “Doesn’t hurt as bad as it looks.”
“Yeah, okay, tough guy. Sit down, I’ll grab you some ice.”
He rolls his eyes, but obeys.
I pad to the kitchen, dig through the freezer, and come up with a bag of freezer burnt peas. I wrap it in a dish towel and make my way to the living room.
“Bad news. One of us forgot to fill the ice tray, but I did manage to find an ancient bag of peas.”
“You first,” he says, nodding toward my scraped knees.
Knowing it’s useless to argue, I sit on the edge of the couch. He settles on the floor in front of me, glasses sliding down his nose as he concentrates on picking a tiny shard of glass from my knee. I press the cold bag of peas gently to the bruises on his neck.
He holds my leg steady, fingers gentle and warm, and for a second I forget about the world outside. Or the one inside, screaming at me that none of the events of tonight can be real.
Except… here we are.
Eventually, Casey says, “What do we do now?”
It’s not a question I can answer.
