Page 7 of Rough Start

“What if I say no?” Kye asked, his eyes darting back and forth again. Max’s wide chest shook with quiet laughter. He took a long drag and blew it out, the plume hitting Kye in the face.

“You won’t.”

* * *

“Come on, Eli,” Kye whispered, feeling he was near passing out. He stood on her front lawn that was in desperate need of a mow, the soggy grass completely saturated after the onslaught of snow over Christmas had melted. Using a scrap of white shale from the broken lawn rocks framing the front walkway, Kye had been pelting the gutter above Eliana’s window for almost ten minutes in hopes of drawing her attention.

At this time of night, it was likely her dad was in a whiskey sour coma, but Kye also knew that the man was more likely to be passed out on the couch in the living room just inside the front door. He could risk neither knocking nor ringing the bell. Having only met Eliana’s dad once in the last eight months, the beer-bellied, heavy bearded man had made it clear that Kye wasn’t welcome in his home or near his daughter.

“Kye?” Eliana asked as she’d pulled back her drapes and slid her window open. She could barely make out his silhouette in the moonlight. “What are you doing here?” she asked but couldn’t keep the joy from her voice.

“Eli, I need your help; can you let me in?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Please, just let me in.”

“Meet me at the back door.” She pulled her window closed, and Kye limped around the side of the house and felt hot tears prick at his eyes as he had to vault the chain-link fence. The back door to the house was at the top of a wooden deck, and Kye had to cling to the railing, using all the strength in his right leg to drag his left up the stairs.

“Hey,” he said to Eliana who was waiting at the sliding glass door wrapped in a pink bathrobe and bare feet.

“Oh my God,” she gasped when she saw his blood-soaked, light-wash jeans. “Kye, what happened?” she practically shrieked.

“Shh,” he whispered and pushed past her to get inside and out of the cold. “I had an accident,” he lied. “Do you have a first aid kit?”

“What kind of accident causes that much bleeding?” she asked skeptically as she took his hand and pulled him down the hall and into the upstairs bathroom. Turning on the light, Kye grimaced as the brightness hurt his eyes. He hadn’t realized how exhausted and dehydrated he was. “Kye Driscoll, you answer me!” Eliana said as she helped him to lean on the counter. It was then she noticed he not only had a bleeding leg but a fat lip and red knuckles.

“It’s not what you think,” he said, sliding his arms out of his leather jacket. Fortunately for him, he’d had the thirty-minute walk to her house to think up his story. “I was putting in some overtime at Hal’s; you know he’s had a couple of big projects, and I wanted to impress him by getting it done early. I had a car jacked up on the lift, and I missed a step under the engine. Hit my head on the side of the pit, and the damn soldering iron went straight through my leg.”

“Oh my God,” she repeated. Her light brown eyes had gone wide during his recount, and now she was holding both sides of his face and examining his eyes. “Do you think you have a concussion?”

“No, I don’t think so, but my head has felt better.”

“Here,” she said, grabbing a green hand towel from the rack and wetting it in the sink behind him. She gently pressed it to his lip, and Kye took it from her to hold it in place. “Why didn’t you call 9-1-1?”

“I thought about it, but you know how Hal gets. He fired a guy last week for chipping the paint on a bumper. If he knew my clumsy ass had hurt myself on the job, I’d be fired for sure.” Eliana could only nod. “Please, don’t call an ambulance. I don’t think it’s too bad. I just need to get cleaned up.”

“Alright,” she relented. Her bottom lip had fit itself between her teeth, and Kye swallowed hard. “I’ll get the kit, but you’re going to need to lose those,” she said, pointing to his pants. Kye felt heat rush to his face, and Eliana must have felt the same hot flash because her cheeks turned bright red. Without another word, she slipped from the bathroom and disappeared into the dark hall. He could hear her opening and closing doors somewhere out of sight.

“Aren’t you worried about waking your dad?” he asked as he unbuckled his belt and dropped the fly.

“He’s in Portland,” she called back to him. “He and Uncle Ron are delivering a lumber shipment. They won’t be back until tomorrow or the next day.”

“Oh,” Kye replied as his pants hit the tile floor, leaving him in a t-shirt and pair of blue boxers that were likely too tight for modesty. Using the same towel for his lip, he began wiping the blood from his thigh.

“Careful,” Eli said from the doorway. “Cotton fibers can make the wound worse.” She set the medical kit on the counter next to him. “Let me,” she offered and sank to her knees. Tossing her hair out of her face, she wet a piece of gauze and began gently wiping the area around the wound.

Kye watched her with fascination as she tended to him. From his seated position, she was practically cradling his leg that was dusted with dark hair. Her long fingers didn’t as much as tremble as she cleaned the blood and tossed the dirty bandages in the wicker garbage can. Her soft touch and the sight of her bobbing between his legs had him gripping the countertop.

“Ow!” he cried as she finally began dabbing at the hole in his leg.

“Sorry,” she said sincerely and looked up at him. She was biting her lip again. “It’s only going to hurt for a moment.” Shedding her bathrobe, she went back to work. Kye let himself be distracted from the pain by studying every inch of Eliana he could.

Her arms were left bare in her white tank top that fit her form perfectly. She was resting on her knees, and the top of her pajama pants had come down enough to show him a thin strip of skin on her lower back where he noted two dimples of the Venus that looked perfectly sized for his fingertips. With her hair pulled to the side, he could see the freckles from her neck stretching over her bare shoulder, and without thinking he brushed them with his thumb.

Eliana shivered when she felt his hand, but she continued to clean the lesion. “I don’t think the rod went all the way through,” she said in a breathy tone. “It looks like it just sliced right through the side.”

“Hmm,” came the sound from Kye. “Felt like it went straight through.”