Page 23 of Grim

Grim blinked, just once, like she’d said something he wasn’t prepared for. Then he nodded, slow and cautious, and followed her inside.

He stood just past the doorway, big and out of place, like he didn’t know what to do with himself in a normal house. His eyes scanned the room, windows, corners, exits, before settling on her.

Sophia felt the air shift when he stepped inside, like her house had to make room for him.

“You live alone,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes,” she stated.

He grunted, clearly disapproving.

Sophia rolled her eyes. “I’m not helpless.”

“Didn’t say you were.”

“You implied it.”

“No.” His jaw flexed. “I implied other people are dangerous.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Because… fair.

Sophia’s gaze dropped to his arm. The original bandage she’d put on was only meant to hold until he got stitches. The edges were peeling, the gauze showing through, and the skin around it looked angrier than it had in the ER.

She sighed. “You didn’t get stitches.”

Men like him never took care of themselves. She’d spent her whole life patching up people who didn’t know how to stop bleeding.

Grim’s jaw flexed. “Didn’t need them.”

“You absolutely did.” She pointed toward the kitchen. “Sit.”

He blinked. “What?”

“Sit,” she repeated, already moving toward the cabinet where she kept her small stash of medical supplies. “Unless you want that to get infected and fall off.”

He muttered something under his breath but obeyed, lowering himself into one of her kitchen chairs. He looked too big for it, too big for her kitchen, too big for her house, too big for her life, but he sat anyway, watching her with that unreadable intensity that made her skin warm.

Sophia set the supplies on the table: saline, antiseptic wipes, butterfly closures, and a small tube of skin-bonding adhesive she kept for emergencies.

She could feel the heat of him even without touching him.

Grim frowned at the items. “That glue stuff again?”

“It’s medical adhesive,” she corrected. “And yes. Because you refused actual stitches like a stubborn child.”

He huffed. “Didn’t have time.”

“You had plenty of time,” she said, stepping closer. “Hold still.”

He did. Completely.

Sophia peeled back the bandage, and Grim didn’t flinch, but she saw the muscle in his jaw tick. The cut was deeper than she remembered, the edges pulled and irritated from movement.

His breath brushed her wrist when she leaned in. She could treat injuries in her sleep. But treating a man who refused to heal — that was something else entirely.

She murmured, “You’re lucky this didn’t tear open.”

He just watched her, watched the way her fingers moved, steady and sure, watched the way she leaned in, close enough that a strand of her hair brushed his arm.