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“If you tell me again what I don’t have to do, Barnes, I’m going to hit you.” Rising, she strode out of the small living room. Once in the bathroom, she closed the door and leaned back against it. “God help me.”
She needed a few minutes to get her head on straight. A few hours, maybe even a few days, would be ideal but it wasn’t like she could leave him out there bleeding like that while she tried to get a grip.
So she dug out the first aid kit she knew Miles kept on hand. She didn’t want to know justwhyhe had such a comprehensive kit in his closet, decided she’d sleep better not knowing. Still, she was glad hedidhave the kit because she found what she needed to help Travis.
There were no staples or a suturing kit. It wouldn’t have mattered because she had no idea how to use either but she found alternatives. She’d had a bit of experience with bad wounds, thanks to a neighbor, back during one of her previous identities, before she’d lived as Bella Franklin. That particular neighbor had had a condition that prevented her from healing well and Isabel had helped out a couple times a week with dressing changes after the woman found out insurance would only cover visiting nurses to come out twice a week instead of the four times weekly the doctors wanted.
Isabel was no nurse but if that wound was as old as Travis said it was, there was no point trying to close it back up. It just needed to be cleaned and the bleeding dealt with. And, as inflamed as it was, he needed to be on antibiotics—hopefully, he was.
After rifling through the kit, she decided to just take the whole thing out to the living room. And damn it, it hadn’t even taken a couple of minutes—nowhere near enough time to settle her mind.
“So, fake it,” she told her reflection. She’d had to do that more than once in her life. She could pretend she wasn’t a mess of nerves, hormones, and heartbreak once she was sitting down next to the guy who had shattered her dreams, right?
Thinking of that, of how much she’d cried over him, steeled her resolve and she left the bathroom with her mask in place.
It wavered a bit when she came into the living room and saw Travis sitting still as death, his head on the heavily padded couch, eyes closed, barely even seeming to breathe.
Her heart gave a hard, painful yank.
Then, before panic could settle in, he cracked open one eye.
She kicked herself mentally and continued on, sitting on the chunky, slab of wood that served as a coffee table this time and putting the supplies on the couch next to him.
“This wound is really red, inflamed as hell. Looks like you’re getting an infection,” she told him. Notgettingone.Hadone. Abadone. “Are you on antibiotics?”
“Yes.”
She gave him a dubious look. “I don’t think they’re doing the trick.”
“I’ll deal with it.”
“Okay.” She flicked him another glance before using a couple of gauze pads to clean up the blood. “You need to let a doctor look at it.”
“I know what infections require, Iz. I’ll take care of it.” He glanced at her but only held eye contact for a moment.
Biting back a sigh, she finished rinsing out the wound, using the towel he’d been holding to catch the run-off since he clearly didn’t want to move. Once that was done, she pulled on a clean pair of gloves and packed the shallow wound carefully, trying not to think about the steady rise and fall of his chest, or the stoic silence. This had to be hurting him but he didn’t make a sound.
Just as she went to tape the non-stick bandage into place, the final part of the dressing, Travis said, “That girl is something else.”
“Aaron isn’t a girl,” Isabel snapped. Annoyed with him,anddisappointed, she shot him a glare.
His eyes were still closed, but his lips curved. “I wasn’t talking about him. The little fairy princess she-devil. Brooklyn, I think.”
Isabel’s cheeks heated and she ducked her head, focusing on the bandage. “Oh, sorry. I ... hell, Aaron gets a hard time from just about everybody and I just assumed ... anyway, I’m sorry. And as to Brooklyn? You’re not wrong. That girl could slay dragons if any of them existed.”
“Something tells me she’d rather charm them and make them into her own dragon army so she could ride them into battle.”
That made her look at him and she saw that he’d once more cracked an eye open and was looking at her.
A laugh bubbled out of her and she gave up trying to distract herself with the bandage. She couldn’t do anything else to secure it without adding more tape and that wasn’t necessary. So she edged away from him under the guise of gathering up the trash in one pile. After stripping over her gloves, she returned the unopened supplies to the proper kit.
“You’re right on the money,” she said, smiling at the thought of brave, stubborn little Brooklyn commanding her own army of dragons.
“I heard something that mouthy punk said when he yelling at them—they foster kids?”
She glanced at him from the corner of her eye. “Yeah.”
“How many are you taking care of?”
