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“Ten years in the Marines, Kelsey. You don’t get to yawn when you’re standing at attention. Or sneeze, or cough. You learn how to cut ‘em off.”
She turned back to him, the hypodermic in her hand. “You had Charlie in the Marines, right? You were, like, a K-9 officer?”
“I was enlisted, and it’s not like a cop with a dog. I was special ops, in a counter-terrorism unit.” He caught her wrist in a light hold before she could bring the hypo closer. “Novocain?”
“Yeah. Your lips and your cheek, neither will heal well without some help keeping them closed.”
“I know. But I don’t want the drug.”
She blinked. “Dex, I’m going to have to do two layers of sutures on your cheek. You don’t want to feel that.”
“I hate the numbness. That’s worse.”
Her look was equal parts skeptical and concerned. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” She set the hypo back on her carefully tended blue paper sheet and returned with a threaded suture needle.
“Can we talk about what you said while you do it?” He could take the pain, but he couldn’t stand having all this shit between them, all this half-spoken desire.
“What do you mean?” she asked as she started the first stitch.
It felt like she’d dug all the way through his cheek and then shoved a flagpole into the hole she’d made, but Dex didn’t react. “You keep saying you want me.”
The needle came back out, and she tied the stitch off. “I have to keep saying it because you keep being weird about it.” As she went back for the next threaded needle, she said, “If you don’t like me that way, Dex, say that. But telling me you’re not good enough for me, that’s stupid.”
She started the next stitch, and it hurt more. He focused on the conversation and tried to pretend he didn’t have a face. “It might be stupid, but it’s also true.”
“See, I hate that, though. You think it’s noble or honorable, or self-sacrificing, whatever”—the needle came through the other side, and she tied the stitch—“but really, it’s just patronizing.Youmaking decisions about whatIshould have inmylife. Shouldn’tIbe the one to decide?”
He didn’t know how to answer that, so he didn’t.
She started the third stitch. “That’s why I say if you’re not interested in me that way, just say so. That’s you making a call about you, and I’ll respect it. But I am extremely sick to death of being surrounded by men who think they know better than I do howmylife should go. If I thought I was too good for you, or you were too dangerous for me, or whatever stupid thing you tell yourself so you don’t have to admit that you’re scared and insecure like everyone else, then I wouldn’t have told you that I like you.”
“You thought you liked that Greg guy, too.”
Her eyes flashed up to his and locked there. Real anger, the first he thought he’d ever seen in her, blazed blue light at him. “My father said the same thing. I swear, the Bulls are all cut from the same prickly cloth. And you are very lucky I’m already hurting you, or I think I’d kick something fragile.”
He didn’t believe for a second that this sweet girl would intentionally cause anyone or anything pain. She’d devoted her life to alleviating it.
But he wasn’t wrong, and he needed her to understand. “It’s true, though.”
The anger in her eyes faded, became hurt, and she looked away. As she started a new stitch, this one on the surface of his face, she said, “It’s really, really messed up to bring Greg up like that.”
Everything about her had changed, all at once, when the emotion in her eyes had shifted. She’d been a little feisty, even a bit smug, calling him out, bantering, arguing. A side of Kelsey Helm he’d never seen before. A charming side. Now, she was quiet, and her shoulders sagged. He really had hurt her.
He didn’t like that feeling at all. “I’m sorry, Kelsey. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
All she did was nod. He didn’t know whether the vague gesture was meant to acknowledge his apology or agree that he’d hurt her. He didn’t know what he could, or should, say next. So he said nothing.
They remained in silence as she finished stitching his ruined cheek, and then put a couple stitches in each lip. When that was finished, she cleaned his face, then changed gloves again and pressed along his ribs—sides, back, and front. Despite the gloves, despite the change in the atmosphere between them, the soft heat of her gentle hands seared through his skin to boil his blood.
Then she turned to the counter and began to clean up. “Your ribs don’t feel broken. Maybe a hairline, but the treatment for that would probably just be rest, like your orbital bone. You want to ice your eye, nose, and jaw, and anywhere else there’s inflammation—fifteen minutes on, fifteen off, for a couple hours at least twice a day. Leave the sutures in your lips for at least three days—maybe more, depending on how they’re healing. You’ll be able to tell if it’s too soon. In your cheek, the subcutaneous sutures will dissolve. Leave the external ones in for at least a week.”
Dex nodded, but still could think of nothing to say to undo the hurt he’d made.
After all her gear was put away, she folded the paper cloth around the bloody waste and slipped it into a plastic bio-waste bag she had in her supplies. “Okay. I’m gonna go.”
