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Yet what’s most striking is the look on his face. He’s staring at me intently, his eyes caressing my face. There’s a dangerous hunger radiating from him. One that I don’t remember seeing before—or, maybe I hadn’t noticed? His body tenses, his nostrils flaring as he continues to drink me in.
My eyes flutter in confusion.
“Nikki?” I ask tentatively.
He snaps out of his trance and he gives me a wide smile—as if he hadn’t been looking at me like a starved man. I’m about to return the smile with a timid one of my own when I note the dip of his gaze, his eyes zeroing in on my chest. That’s when I recall my state of undress. And it’s not just my naked body that I don’t want him seeing, but also the marks that cover most of my torso.
I quickly wrap my arms around my body to cover myself, but the movement is so brusque that I end up bending over in pain.
“Who the hell did this to you, Luce?” He’s next to me in two steps, his big hands splayed over my shoulder as he takes in my wound.
“Sergio.” I give him a tight smile.
His features darken, cold anger emanating from him.
“He needs todiefor hurting you,” he grits out, and my heart speeds up in my chest at the fact that he’d so readily avenge me.
“Thank you for saying that,” I murmur. “But right now I need to get the bullet out. Will you…” I wet my lips, surprised at myself for putting my trust in him so readily. “Will you help me?”
“I’m here foryou, Luce,” he punctuates each word. “I’ll help you with anything you want. But we need to get you to a doctor. It’s not safe to do this here.”
I shake my head.
“I can’t,” I say, and I tell him everything that happened and what my plan for today is. “So you see, I can’t leave. And in order to pull this off, I need to get the bullet out and sew the wound.”
He’s about to disagree with me, but I slowly lift my hand to his face, fitting my palm to his cheek. At the same time, we both inhale deeply, our eyes connecting. Something flickers in my chest, almost as if my entire being sparks alive at the merest contact with his flesh.
“Luce,” he rasps out.
“Please,” I plead.
He doesn’t speak for a moment, seemingly at war with himself. Eventually, he gives me a tight nod. Without a word, he bends down to pick up the tweezers, going to the sink to wash them before disinfecting them.
“Come here.” He motions me to him. I take a seat on a chair, while he positions himself in front of me. Placing a hand on my back, he eyes the wound with concern as he takes a deep breath, “This will hurt.”
“I know.”
“I wish I could take your pain onto myself, Luce,” he murmurs huskily.
“Do it,” I urge him.
He pushes the tweezers into my wound, doing his best to avoid hurting me more than necessary as he digs for the bullet. I close my eyes as I suffer in silence, not making even one sound. Somehow, I know that would distress him, his pain perhaps more profound than mine.
How I know this, I’m not sure. There’s only this certainty deep within, borne perhaps out of my own foolish romantic notions, but also out of the friendship we’d shared in the past—a bond so deep, I’ve been living as a shell of myself since he’s been gone.
To my surprise, he finds it fairly fast, pulling it out and dropping it onto the table.
At the same time, though, more blood gushes out of the wound, and he hurries to press gauze to it.
“Can you sew it, too?”
He nods. His lips are pressed into a thin line, his breathing growing labored—more so than mine, and I’m the one with a hole in my shoulder.
He disinfects some needle and thread, and with a precision I wouldn’t have expected of him, he sews the wound in just a few strokes. His features are tense as he focuses on his task. When he’s done, he presses more gauze, wiping the last bit from my wound and cleaning it up with some disinfectant before he adds a bandage on top of it.
“How are you feeling?”
“Good,” I wheeze. “It didn’t hurtthatbadly.” I attempt a smile.
