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I move closer. Hades only notices me when I pick up his wrist, examining his injury. His eyes tighten and he pulls at his hand.
I don’t let go, though. Instead, I shoot him a look and bring his hand closer, trying to see it better. There is a particularly wicked shard of glass sticking out. I wince, looking up at him.
“Let’s go,” I say, taking him by the elbow.
“Go?” His cheeks are still flushed. “Go where?”
“You are going to sit down and let me clean up the mess you’ve made of your knuckles.”
Hades stops me, resisting. When I look back at him, he’s giving me the most puzzled look.
“How could ye?”
“How could I what?” I tilt my head, narrowing my eyes on his face.
“Ye stopped me from saving that woman!”
I shake my head. “No. I stopped you from pounding that man’s skull in. She could’ve refused to get in his car if she thought it was dangerous. Instead, she didn’t even think twice before hopping in the passenger seat. She was too scared of you.”
That seems to knock some of the wind out of his sails.
“Scared of me?” he repeats. As if it’s a foreign concept or something. “Why would she be scared of me?”
He really doesn’t get it. I draw in a deep breath, making myself expel it fully before I answer.
“Because you are a big, strange man who looks like he’s going to beat the shit out of somebody. You don’t know the situation; you couldn’t even say for sure which language they were speaking. Yet you had already decided exactly what was going on and how you were going to handle it.” I suck my teeth, looking at him. “I would’ve been scared, too. Actually, scratch that… I was scared.”
He scrunches up his face. “What did ye have to be scared of?”
Heat blooms high in my cheeks. But I know that a moment of embarrassment is worth it, in this critical moment.
“I was scared for you,” I say, keeping my words quiet. “What if he had a gun? Did you even stop to think about that?”
Hades swallows, his green eyes hard on mine. He stares at me for a beat. Then he jerks his gaze away, out over the ocean.
“He didn’t.” His voice is a mere whisper. His expression is blank, but I can read that by now.
He’s thinking about what I said. Imagining what kind of chaos could’ve broken out if the stranger had pulled out a weapon.
“It was pure luck.” I slip my hand around his elbow, tugging him in the direction of the warehouse. “Now come on. You are bleeding like crazy. Let me get the glass out and try to wrap the hand up.”
He gives me the tiniest shrug, letting me pull him along. I tug my black sweatshirt off, wrapping it around his hand.
If Hades notices, he doesn’t say anything. He’s definitely on a different planet than me, sorting through his thoughts silently.
We trudge back to the warehouse in silence. He doesn’t say anything as I spread out his hand on the table or douse it with a gallon of rubbing alcohol, purloined from my piles of art supplies.
He grits his teeth as I use a pair of long handled tweezers to remove the glass from the car’s window. It isn’t until I am wrapping his hand in strips of a shredded black sweater that I have the nerve to ask.
I crinkle my face, peering up at him. “Why do you always have to jump in?”
He looks at me, as if I’ve grown another head or something. “What?”
“When there is a seemingly violent man and a seemingly scared woman, you need to separate them. You play the white knight. It’s clear that you’re ready to pound the guy into the ground.” I swallow, scrunching up my nose. “My question is, why? What makes you do that?”
His gaze flits to me, his green eyes all but on fire. “Maybe I just hate bullies.”
“Hades…” I stare at him, tying the last strip of cloth over his injured hand. “You have a lot of qualities that… could be… desirable.” I flush but I refuse to drop his gaze. “But that… that willingness to be violent? To jump in, to mix it up, knowing that there is going to be physical danger?”
