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For his part, yeah, he was afraid. He wouldn’t say so aloud, but inside, where the fear throbbed, he recognized it for what it was.
He was afraid to hurt her. To disappoint or disillusion her. To lose her.
Jesus. He was afraid to lose her before he even had her.
“Dex?” she asked when they’d been standing there like mannequins for a while.
“Yeah?”
“Will you let me fix your face?”
“Oh. Uh … Yeah. Yeah, thanks. This way.”
Her bag still on his shoulder, he led her through his house, to the main bathroom, and tried not to imagine what she was thinking about on the way.
~oOo~
“Feels like a hairline fracture of your right orbital bone. That’ll heal by itself if you don’t get punched in the face again for several weeks. The nose is definitely broken. You probably shouldn’t have stitched your nose until it was set. If those sutures shift even a little, they could be pretty uncomfortable.”
On the bathroom counter, beside the sink, Kelsey had spread out a blue paper cloth and arrayed several medical tools neatly across it. All of her tools were familiar to him for one reason or another; some were familiar because he used them for the exact opposite reason she did: to cause harm, not to repair it.
She’d instructed him to remove his shirt and sit on the closed toilet. As he’d done so, she’d scrubbed her hands and pulled on a pair of blue gloves. Now she stood before him, her leg against his, and pressed gentle fingers all over his face.
Dex was tense as a guitar string with her so close, her soft, small hands on his face, but he attempted a laugh. “I tried to set it myself. Couldn’t get it done.”
She leaned back and frowned at him. “You tried to set your nose and failed? That had to hurt.”
Like a son of a bitch, yeah. But he only shrugged.
“Okay. Now I understand why the swelling is so bad, but the break seems clean. This is going to hurt, too. You ready?”
He took a breath and locked in. “Go for it.”
“Did you really tell my father you’d bone me if you wanted?” she asked.
“What?” While absolute shock yanked his attention from her hands, she set his nose. “Agh! Fuck!” His eyes ran freely, and it hurt to blink, but his nose did feel better, and the stitches didn’t hurt any more than they already had.
“Sorry. Wanted to distract you.” She handed him a tissue. “But my dad did tell me you said that. Did you?”
He wiped his eyes and nose, dabbing gently. Her father punched really fucking hard when he was really fucking pissed. “He got it wrong. I said I’d bone you if you wanted me to. Sorry. I didn’t mean to disrespect you. I was looking for something that would set him off.”
That earned him a wry chuckle. “Mission accomplished, I guess.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know where guys get off thinking they’re better than women. You’re all chest-thumping morons, honestly. Your jaw’s dislocated. Open your mouth as wide as you can.”
Her way of holding a conversation right now had him disoriented. He didn’t know whether to engage her first statement or obey her last. But her hands were on his face again, her thumbs on his split lips, so he opened his mouth as far as he could—which, considering the pain in his jaw and the new blood already dripping from his lips, felt like he’d unhinged, but when Kelsey slid her thumbs in, along his molars on both sides, she had to fight her way in between his tops and bottoms.
“You’re lucky I’ve had to reset Uncle Gun’s jaw four times. I’m a pro at human jaws now. Please don’t bite me, okay?” He nodded, and she said, “I don’t like the word ‘bone’ that way, but I do want you to. If you’re offering.” While that notion zapped his brain, she pressed down on his teeth with her thumbs and up on his chin with the heels of her palms, and his jaw shifted, painfully and with a deeply unsettling noise that ricocheted off the inside of his skull.
Her thumbs slipped from his mouth, and Dex sagged back against the toilet tank, rubbing his jaw. It was fucking sore, but not even half as bad as it had been before the bright burst of pain when she’d popped it back where it belonged.
“Don’t open your mouth wide for about a month—andreallydon’t yawn. You feel a yawn coming on, do what you have to to stop it. You do not want to yawn while the tissues around that joint are still inflamed.”
“Not a problem.”
“I’m serious. Don’t blow that off.” She was back at the counter, changing her gloves and preparing a hypodermic. Time for stitches.
