Page 78 of Ruthless Claim

The knuckles are worse than I thought, or she’s reacting to something I’ve stopped being able to accurately assess about myself. “Jesus, this one’s split open. Both of them…” She looks up at me, her pupils dilated. “What did you do? Hit a wall?”

“A person,” I say.

Her head snaps up again and her throat bobs. “A person.”

“Mickey Sheehan. He’s a dock worker. Or was. No, I didn’t kill him,” I tell her, seeing how her skin sallows. “He was skimming product for three months and Connor wanted it handled.” Her eyes narrow. “We got what we needed. He gave up the names. And then,” I pause, wrestling with how much I should say. I decide she doesn’t need to know the full of it. “He said something he shouldn’t have.”

Those dark eyes are slits now. “What did he say?”

“Nothing I’m going to repeat.”

She cocks her head to the side. “What did you do to him?”

“I broke his jaw.”

She startles before a breathless laugh escapes her. “Good.” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “And you’re not going to tell me what he said?”

“Nope.”

Her eyes search mine.

I hold her gaze, but I don’t fill the silence.

After a moment she seems to decide she’ll get it out of me later, or she won’t, but either way my hands need dealing with first.

She takes me to the kitchen by the wrist and the grip of her hand is tighter than it needs to be.

“Sit,” she says, pointing at the island stool.

I sit. She goes to the freezer and comes back with a dish towel of ice.

She takes my right hand and positions it on the counter with both of hers like she’s handling something breakable, which is funny, given the state of the thing.

She lays the ice over the knuckles. The ice stings but I don’t react. That was beaten out of me a long time ago.

“I take it you’ve seen Connor?” she asks. I can’t see her face as she’s bent over my hands, but I inhale the full smell of her shampoo. It oddly calms me.

“I went after and told him myself.”

“And?”

I shrug, the coldness of the ice pack numbing my knuckles. “He was unhappy.”

She makes a sound. “I bet.” She adjusts the ice. Her fingers are warm where they bracket my hand.

She’s so close that I can feel her body weight, and I am very aware that it has been a long night and this is the first good thing that’s happened in it. “Let me guess—he talked to you like you were a piece of shit?”

A ghost of a smile crosses my face, remembering Connor’s dressing down. “Something like that.”

She makes another disgusted sound but doesn’t say anything else, focusing on holding the ice over my hand for another five minutes.

Then she goes to the cabinet under the sink for the first aid kit.

She sits on the stool beside me and our knees touch, but she doesn’t move away.

She opens the kit and lays everything out neatly—antiseptic, cotton, gauze, tape, and I watch her do it.

When was the last time someone did this for me after my parents died?