“The old woman? The gimp they kept locked up? I guess she died. Died from complications of the infection, maybe. So, good job!”
The room tilts. My mouth goes dry.
My dick killed her.
And I know, with a cold certainty in my bones:
It’s going to be a long time before I can be with someone again.
nine
Present Day
Scalpel firmly in my hand, I slice through the brachial plexus, severing the nerves while being careful to preserve the subclavian artery.
“That’s it, right?” Ellis asks, too loudly.
“Shh! I don’t want to damage this. I’ve got hold of it.” I pinch the vessel to hold it up, showing it off.
“It’s not like she’s alive anymore.” Ellis glances at me from across the slab.
“Are you ready for me to stitch?” Evie Lynx asks as she holds up the suture kit.
I nod toward Ellis to tag and label what we found. “You’re not even in this class with us.”
Evie slides her butt onto a stainless-steel counter in the basement of NU’s medical school and rolls her eyes. “You’renot in gross anatomy with the baby doctor students, either, Scout Turner.”
I huff a breath over my mask. I’m not wearing itfor sterility. I just like pretending I’m in the operating room. And the smell of formaldehyde has a strange way of making me crave bacon.
Ellis, Rowan Greaves, and I formed a clique early in the semester to get ahead in our undergraduate anatomy class. Did I use my mom’s connections to get into the basement of the medical school? Yep. We get to explore the cadavers after the first-year medical students have had their exams.
Knowing I’ll be in their shoes in a couple of years, and that I’ll be a surgeon in several more after that, it makes pulling favors worth it.
“Why areyouhere?” I ask Evie with a sharp glance.
She shrugs, white-blonde ponytails falling over her shoulders. A feral grin crawls over her red-painted lips. “For fun.”
I’m not even surehowEvie and I became friends. One day at a Greek gathering, she slipped her arm through mine and said, “Hey, I’m Evie. Your new friend.” And that was that. No getting away from her.
I like her. And I don’t like many people. And many people don’t likeher. She tags along whenever I’m into something she finds morbidly fascinating. Like dead bodies, apparently.
“AndI had to come because I heard that Miss Prissy Scoutsville got a tattoo.” She slaps both of her cheeks as if she’s aghast, dropping the suture kit onto the floor.
Ellis flashes a glare at me as if she’s jealous I told Evie and not just her.
“How did you find out?”
“Oh… My ex told me.” Slipping off the counter, she grabs the needle and thread.
“Your ex?” Was she dating Apollo?
“Nico Griffin.”
My cheeks flush with embarrassment. How much did he tell her? That I blew his brother while he used his machine on my clit?
If she knows, she’s not giving anything away.
Rowan clears his throat and flicks his gloves into the trash bin. “Are we talking bodies or tattoos, ladies? Because I’m here to ace the exam. Not gossip.”
