He hoisted himself onto the edge of the kitchen counter instead of sitting properly and held out his injured hand with an expression that made it clear he was not giving me a victory. I stepped between his knees because the kitchen was too narrow to avoid it, and the second I moved close enough to smell cold air, sweat, blood, the clean trace of his soap, and the cologne I remembered too well, I wished I had made him sit on the couch across the room.
His gaze tracked every movement, heavy and intent.
I grabbed his wrist harder than necessary, my fingers digging into the skin above the stained gauze. “Hold still.”
“You always this rough with injured men?”
“Only the ones who deserve it.”
His mouth curved without humor, a cold, bitter slash. “That must be a long list.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. You’re not special.”
The second the words left my mouth, his eyes lifted toward mine.
There was the hit. Direct, ugly, and earned. A flicker of something raw and wounded in the gray depths before it disappeared beneath a fresh layer of ice.
His voice went flat and dead. “Yeah, I got that message.”
I tore open an antiseptic wipe with my teeth because my hands needed the violence, the sharp sound of foil ripping. “Do not sit in your sad little apartment and act like you’ve been innocent.”
“I never said I was innocent.”
“You’ve punished me all this time.”
“You humiliated me.”
“You made sure I paid for it.”
“You made sure I knew my place.”
I pressed the wipe against his split knuckles, the alcohol biting into raw flesh.
He hissed and jerked, a full-body flinch, and I tightened my hold, pinning his hand in place. “Don’t be a baby.”
“Don’t be a bitch.”
I looked up slowly, my gaze rising from his hand to his face. “Say that again.”
His eyes burned, two points of pale fire. “You heard me.”
The air between us flashed white-hot.
I should have stepped back. I should have shoved his hand away and let him clean his own wounds the way he kept pretending he wanted. Instead, I pressed the wipe harder, grinding it into the broken skin, and watched his jaw lock, one muscle ticking furiously.
“You think calling me a bitch does anything?” I asked, my voice low and venomous. “I’ve been called worse by men with better aim.”
His whole face changed. The controlled anger shattered, replaced by something feral, protective, and utterly enraged. “Do not bring him into this.”
“You mean the man you beat bloody in a parking lot because he brought himself into this?”
Easton leaned closer, his eyes wild now, anger pouring through every controlled line of him and vibrating in the space between us. “He opened his mouth about you like he had a right to anything, and I wanted his teeth on the floor. That does not make me noble, Clarke. It makes me pissed. It makes me stupid. It makes me the guy who learned too late that all those rules you threw at me were not only you being cold.”
My fingers faltered for a fraction of a second, the pressure against the wipe easing. Then I tightened my grip again because faltering was weakness, and we were both apparently allergic to showing any.
“So what? Now you understand me?”
“No.”
