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“Whathappenedto you?” I demanded.
Logan’s jaw tightened. He pushed on the door. “Don’t worry about it, Madelyn. Go back to bed.”
There was something a little wild in his eyes that I hadn’t noticed before either. But that and the blood weren’t enough to stop a prickle of anger from racing through me.
Heusedto call me Maddie. Playfully but fondly, as though we were something like friends. But, for reasons I’d never understood, that companionable familiarity had stopped sometime not long after he and Holand had moved in.
He didn’t push firmly enough to stop me from coming in. He didn’t want to go too hard on me—because he didn’t think I could handle it, just like he didn’t think I could handle whatever had brought him here tonight. I shoved past him into the bathroom before he could make a more determined attempt at shutting me out.
As I spun toward him in the small space, he caught my arm by the elbow. His eyes flashed when they met mine, and a tingle of electricity hummed through the air between us.
Thathad never gone away. If anything, I’d felt it more often after I’d found myself passing him in the hallway in my pajamas or sitting across the table from him at family dinners. Sometimes it seemed like he felt it too. Other times I’d thought it was all in my head.
Right now, some kind of tension was radiating off him. I could practically taste the adrenaline in the air. I had to think it was a whole lot more to do with whatever had gotten him bloodied up than with me, though.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he snapped.
“I think I’ve been studying first aid since I was ten, and if you came here rather than going to a hospital,someonehad better take a look at you.” My gaze dropped to his shirt. Fuck, that was a lot of blood. Oh my God. My stomach lurched. “Maybe youshouldgo to the hospital. If you get an infection—”
I shouldn’t have said that. I knew I shouldn’t have, but the situation was so crazy the words just tumbled out.
Logan cut me off with a noise that was almost a snarl and spun away from me, back toward the sink faucet that was still spewing out water. “Most of it’s not mine. You think I look bad; you should see the other guy.”
I stared at him, having trouble processing those words, and not just because I had the full expanse of his well-muscled back on display just inches away from me.
Logan hadn’t been the type to get into fights. When he stood up to people—to jerks who deserved it—he just shut them down with his words, his confidence, and the natural intimidation that came with his size. I’d rarely seen him lay a hand on anyone.
Because I was staring at his back, I noticed a line of red that was slowly expanding just below his shoulder blade.Someof the blood was his.
Logan was splashing water on his face and neck, ignoring me as if that would make me go away. I had the urge to run upstairs for the larger first aid kit we kept in the main bathroom, but I was afraid he’d take off the second I let him out of my sight. So I grabbed the smaller kit out of the cabinet under the sink, popped it open, and yanked up Logan’s shirt.
I was trying to keep my mind strictly professional. It wasn’t my fault that I noticed the heat of his skin and the flex of his muscles as my hand skimmed over his back.
There was absolutely nothing weird about the fact that being this close to my stepbrother got me all heated up. I’d had a crush on Logan since I was twelve, after he’d told off a bunch of junior-high bullies who’d been taunting me. That was a year before Mom and Holand had even started dating. Technically, Mom had cockblocked—pussy-blocked?—me. I should have had first dibs on the Brooks family.
Logan’s head jerked around as I reached for the alcohol wipes. I caught a stutter of breath and tried not to wonder whether my touch had affected him the same way being so close to him affected me.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he growled.
“Making sure you don’t end up worse off than whoever you got into it with did,” I retorted. “It’s going to sting. Deal with it.” Then I dabbed the wipe over the narrow cut.
Logan’s stance tensed with a restrained wince, but he didn’t make a sound. He gripped the sides of the sink as I finished cleaning up the wound as well as I could. The bleeding seemed to be slowing—the cut didn’t look that deep. But even a minor infection could be fatal given his medical history.
I smeared antiseptic cream on the spot as gently as I could manage and stuck a gauze pad overtop. The rest of his back looked unharmed, other than that cut curving over his shoulder and dipping beneath the collar of his shirt.
I frowned at it and tapped his shoulder beside the broken skin. “You’re going to need to take your shirt right off for me to deal with that one properly.”
“For fuck’s sake.” Logan whirled around to face me. His golden eyes burned into mine, and suddenly it was very hard to focus on my concern for his injuries rather than the effect his presence had on me this close up. His voice came out strained. “I can deal with the rest myself. Leave it alone.”
I’d swear there was enough electricity in the room now to raise the hairs on the back of my neck with a quiver of desire. I stared right back at him, my tone firm. “You can let me help, or I’m going upstairs and telling your dad that you’re bleeding all over the bathroom. It’s up to you.”
He glowered back at me. “Why do you always have to be so fucking stubborn, Maddie?”
The nickname gave me a giddy thrill, even though it was the most minor of victories. “Because I need to be, obviously,” I said, and tugged at his shirt.
Logan yanked it out of my hands, but he peeled it off, muttering something about how he needed to rinse it off anyway. I did my best not to ogle the expanse of his sculpted chest and focused on the cut by his neck, giving it the same treatment as the one on his back.
Logan’s posture remained rigid while I worked. It was a hell of a lot harder to concentrate with him gazing down at me. The musk of his skin washed over me, mixed with a salty aquatic tang as if he’d just come out of the ocean, even though the sea was hours away.
