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“Arm under here,” I order, flipping the faucet to lukewarm. “We need to cool down your skin.”
She glances back over her shoulder. “Is my Gram—”
All at once, I grab her face and force her to look in my eyes. “Everyone else in this room is fine. You aren’t. Because you were too busy worrying about everyone else.”
She frowns. “I wasn’t—”
“Get your arm under the water before I have to fucking force you.”
Her jaw clenches, but she turns to the sink and does as I ask.
About goddamn time.
As soon as the water pours over her arm, she winces. I can see her jaw quivering from the force with which she’s grinding her teeth.
“Does that hurt?”
“It doesn’t feel great,” she grits out.
“Stay here for fifteen minutes and it will feel better.”
“Maybe I should…” She swallows, her eyes darting side to side without ever looking at me. “Maybe I should go to the hospital? My Gram could drive me.”
“If you need to go to the hospital, I’ll take you.”
She frowns. “You don’t have to take care of me. I can take care of—”
“Don’t finish that sentence,” I snarl. “If it wasn’t for me, you’d still be standing in the corner with your arm on fire. Actually, if it wasn’t for me, you’d be dead in an alley. Clearly, you can’t take care of yourself.”
“There was a lot going on! I was distracted!”
I nod in sarcastic agreement. “Okay, so you can only take care of yourself when everything is going perfectly and nothing stressful is happening. That’s very realistic.”
“Why didn’t you just let me burn up?” she hisses. “That would have saved you a lot of trouble.”
“It would have taken weeks to get the smell of burning skin and hair out of the curtains. I saved you for the maids’ sake.”
She stares at me for a second, her nostrils flared, a novel’s worth of unspoken words hiding behind her full lips. Then she glances down at the water running over her arm. “I don’t need to go to the hospital. I’m fine.”
“I’m aware. Lucky for you, I put the fire out before it could get through the sweater. You have a nasty scald, but it’ll heal up fine.”
“Are you a doctor now, too?” she mumbles.
She isn’t so far off. With the kind of life I lead, I’ve been hurt plenty of times when running to the hospital wasn’t an option. The police would have put two and two together if someone was killed in a shootout the same night I showed up in the emergency room with a bullet graze.
The point is, I know how to handle fire and blood.
The shrill alarm finally stops. Akim climbs down from the chair and turns to me. “What now?”
“Bandages, antibiotic ointment, and pain medication,” I list. “All of it’s in the—”
“Linen closet outside the guest bathroom,” he finishes, already moving towards the hallway. “I know.”
As soon as he’s gone, Gram and Ashley step forward to fill the opening.
“What in the hell happened?” Ashley says in disbelief. “How the fuck did you set pancakes on fire, girl? Out of the two of us, you’re the cook.”
Piper snorts. “Making frozen meals at home doesn’t make me a cook.”
