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“I don’t want.”
Her eyes narrow. “Then you’ll get an infection and ruin your pretty face forever.”
“I thought women like scars.”
“That may be true, but a festering wound isn’t a scar.” She walks past me to the hallway, already disappearing around the door. “I’ll be back.”
I don’t need her to clean me up. I’ve cleaned myself up after enough fights to know my way around a first aid kit. What I’m not as familiar with is having someone around to tend to my wounds.
It’s curiosity more than anything that pulls me towards the couch. A glimpse into another, more domestic life.
Commercials have been playing on the TV since I walked in, but the movie comes back on now. It’s in black and white and the chyron underneath says Roman Holiday. There’s a flicker of recognition somewhere in the back of my mind.
Then two paws come creeping out from under the coffee table. Followed by two wide eyes.
Gregory glances towards the screen as the male lead says something, and I remember. Luna’s favorite movie.
“Your namesake?” I ask, nodding at what must be Gregory Peck on the screen.
The cat looks up at the TV for a long moment before whipping his attention back to me. Inch by inch, he crawls out from under the coffee table, slinking closer and closer to the couch.
Finally, he jumps up onto the end of it, his tail swishing behind him.
“Stay over there if you know what’s good for you,” I warn him.
I can’t believe I’m even looking at a cat in my house, let alone talking to one. Today has not gone at all how I thought it would.
Luna stomps back into the room with a bundle of supplies. She lays everything out on the table and then perches on the edge of it, facing me. There’s nowhere for our legs to go, so they end up intertwined. Just like they were before I left the dinner.
It’s an effort not to follow the hem of my shirt as it slides further and further up her thigh.
When she grabs my hand and balances it palm down on her knee, I give up that effort. I could have her out of my shirt and on her back on the coffee table in two moves. One move if I let her keep the shirt on. She looks so fucking good in it that I just might.
“Well?” she asks, dragging a damp cloth across my knuckles. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
“You don’t need to worry about it.”
“Tough. I am worried about it.”
Luna scrubs at my hand like she wants to leave a few marks of her own. She’s angry.
Odd.
“Where I was tonight has nothing to do with you.”
Before she can say anything, Gregory settles himself against my leg. I didn’t even see him slink down the couch, but now, he’s purring loudly against me.
“Oh, just great.” Luna pries him away from me and shoves him onto the floor. “He doesn’t need you fawning over him, too, Gregory. He’s fine. Didn’t you hear him? Bloody knuckles and a bruised eye are normal.”
Gregory dives back under the coffee table with a loud meow and Luna rinses out her rag and starts in on my other hand.
She’s worried about me, but she wishes she wasn’t. And fuck me, but I don’t want her to be upset. God only knows why.
“This isn’t normal for me,” I tell her.
She hesitates for a second, glancing up and then quickly away again. It’s like she’s trying not to let herself look at me.
“Normally,” I continue, “I give men the chance to back down from a fight with me. Most of them do the smart thing and take it. But tonight, someone got what they deserved.”
