Page 79 of Beautifully Scarred Omega

I pull away from Finn and run.

He stays with me the whole way to the house, and lets us in through a side door into the kitchen.

The door swings shut behind us, and the silence hits like a wall after all that noise. Finn stands beside me, shirtless and breathing hard. Neither of us moves or speaks.

“You need stitches,” he says. “We should get you to a hospital.”

“I’m fine.”

I roll my sleeve up to get a better look at the wound. It has clean edges, about three inches long. It’s pretty deep, but it looks clean. The blade missed the tendon and the artery, thankfully. All it needs is a couple of stitches.

“Do you have a suture kit? Antiseptic, gauze?” I ask, still inspecting the cut, pressing the skin around it to see better.

Finn doesn’t answer right away. When I look up, he’s staring at me like I’ve completely lost my mind. “What?” he asks.

“Medical supplies. I’ll stitch it myself.”

“Sophie, you can’t stitch your own arm.” He sounds appalled at the idea, which just irritates me.

“I’ve done it before, Finn. I’m good at it.”

He opens his mouth as if to protest, sees the determination on my face, and closes it, shaking his head slowly.

“First aid kit’s in the bathroom down the hall,” he says. “I’ll get it.”

He disappears down the hall. I lean against the counter and look around. The kitchen is big, a wide island in the center with a white marble top that feels cool against my skin.

Finn comes back with a white first aid case and a folded black t-shirt, which he sets on the counter beside me. He’s pulled on a fresh shirt of his own.

“Yours is...” He nods at my arm.

I look down. The hoodie is soaked through, the fabric cold and stiff against my skin.

“Thanks.”

He flips open the kit. It’s well-stocked, right down to the lidocaine and sutures.

“Ethan insisted,” Finn says. “He worries about the three of us doing something stupid.” He pauses, his eyes dropping to the blood drying on my arm. “Starting to think he had a point.”

I reach back to pull my hoodie off, but the second I lift my injured arm the wound drags and I hiss through my teeth. The blood-stiff fabric snags and holds. I try again, one-handed, and get nowhere.

Finn watches me fight with it for a moment. Then he asks, quietly, “May I?”

No. I want to refuse on reflex. I’ve stitched myself in worse places than a warm kitchen, a stairwell once, the back of a moving van. I was always alone, because that’s just how it’s been.

But I can’t lift it high enough, and the fabric won’t move by itself.

I nod, and I hate that I don’t have a choice.

His hands are warm as they find the hem and lift. He waits while I pull my good arm free, then eases the sleeve down over my injured arm, careful not to drag the fabric across the cut. Then the hoodie comes away and I’m sitting in nothing but my sports bra and leggings.

The cold air isn’t what makes me want to cross my arms over myself.

Finn’s eyes go to my shoulder, to the thick, raised scar that curves from my collarbone toward my back.

I expect him to flinch, or to look at me pityingly, but he just looks away, as if a scar this big and this deep is no more remarkable than a freckle.

“So,” he says, his voice carefully light. “How do we do this?”