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“Sorry about your shirt,” he said, nodding to the gaping hole in the sleeve where the knife had cut through.
“Oh, shit,” I said, remembering. “It’s Frank’s shirt.”
He shot me a sharp glance. “You’ll have to come up with a story. You can’t tell her what happened tonight.”
I blinked up at him. “You guys are serious about that? Why do you care if anyone knows you got in a fight? Besides, it’s not like you pulled a knife on anyone.”
His eyes grew hard for a moment, like shiny stones behind his glasses. “Yes, we’re serious. And it matters. Make something up.” His eyes dropped briefly and I could practically feel them skim over my bare shoulders, down my torso, to rest on the bare skin of my midriff. “Pity,” he went on with a slight smile, raising his gaze back to my face. “The shirt looks good on you.”
The sensation was so different than it had been when Drew had looked me over, and I felt the heat rising to my cheeks. I suddenly remembered the incident in the supply closet on the first day of school, when he’d leaned in like he was about to kiss me before reaching around to grab something off the shelf. Was he messing with me again? Or was he flirting? Sometimes I couldn’t read him at all.
Before I could think of how to respond though, he turned his attention back down to my arm, and before I could stop him, he’d rolled the sleeve up above the knife wound, exposing the length of my forearm.
“Holy shit.” His eyes grew round, then turned dark and menacing.
Fuck.
I’d forgotten. I tried to pull my arm out of his grip, but he held me in place, raising his other hand to tentatively run one fingertip down the length of a healed burn scar. On some parts of my arm, the nerves were completely dead and I couldn’t feel a thing, but the area he’d chosen was oversensitive, and I shivered at his touch. He raised his eyes to meet mine again.
“These aren’t old,” he observed.
“Eight months,” I answered in a hoarse voice, feeling the lump rise to block my throat. The skin all over my arm was raised and twisted, and I hated the way it looked, hated the reminder. Aside from the glimpse Devan had gotten on that first day in chemistry lab, Micah was the first person to see it since I’d left the hospital, and I prayed he wouldn’t ask me what happened because I didn’t think I could answer.
He didn’t though, and I swallowed around the lump in my throat and choked out a short laugh. “Now we match.”
He looked at me quizzically, and before I could stop myself I lifted my free hand and copied his movement, tracing a finger gently down the length of the scar on his face, following it over his lip and down under his chin. His eyes dilated and took on a slightly feral gleam.
I let my hand fall, wondering what the hell I’d been thinking. He continued to stare at me for a beat longer, before turning his attention once again to my arm. “We need to hurry. I need to get out of here before your roommates get back.”
I tried not to let the discomfort of having my scars on display show while he worked. He cleaned the wound efficiently with water and I did my best not to flinch as he disinfected it with hydrogen peroxide before examining the cut. It was long, but didn’t appear to be deep, and the bleeding had stopped, leaving behind a raw red line across my skin directly below the bend in my elbow.
“You don’t need stitches,” he announced, peering close, and proceeded instead to seal the wound with a bandage from the cabinet.
“What are you, a doctor?” I asked. “What would you have done if it did need stitches?”
He didn’t answer, but his mouth quirked up in an amused grin. “You’re good to go. I have to get out of here.”
I nodded and didn’t protest when he bent to help me to my feet. I was exhausted after the adrenaline rush of the evening, and more than ready to fall into bed and pretend this night had never happened.
I should have known better than to assume everything was over though, because the second we stepped out of the bathroom the sound of a key fitting into the lock of the front door froze us both in our tracks. A second later Nora’s laughing voice echoed from the hallway.
13
“Come on,” Micah growled, hauling me into my bedroom before shutting the door behind him and locking it.
A second later the girls were in the suite, and Nora called out my name. “Camilla, are you here?”
Oh right, they didn’t know I’d left.
“I’m here,” I called through the closed door. “I got a ride with someone else. Sorry, I couldn’t find you to let you know.”
“Thank God,” she called back. “We’ve got to make sure we exchange phone numbers next time. We didn’t know if you were dead in a dumpster or something.”
I shuddered. That wasn’t too far off base.
After some muffled conversation in the common room, I heard the bedroom doors close, and I swung around to face Micah. “How did you know this was my room?”
He smirked. “All the dorms are laid out the same. This is the room that faces the lake, so it had to be yours.”
