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“Easy,” he says, and he eases me down until I’m sitting. He crouches in front of me. His presence is no less threatening, even with each time those strong, warm hands pull me out of harm’s way. One wraps around my hand, my injured one, and I cry out. “Shit,” he mutters, and lets go it, frowning at the wrap around my palm.
“How the hell did you get that?” He asks, his eyes narrowing. My throat closes up, and my lower lip starts to shake.
“Accident,” the word sticks in my mouth and he tilts his head, taking my hand slowly into his, tenderly.
“And you didn’t have anything better to wrap it with?” He asks, and I glance down. I guess the bandage gauze is pretty old, yellowing at the edges. “Hang on.” He gets to his feet and walks away from me, boots crunching over the gravel of this empty lot. I scramble up, watching him, wondering what he could be up to, and he opens the saddlebags on his bike.
When he turns around, there are fresh bandages in his hands, and a small black case. I swallow hard and he raises an eyebrow.
“It’d be better if you were sitting, but--“ He shrugs and takes my hand, unwinding the gauze from it. As the layers are peeled away, my injury is revealed. The wound itself is red, raw, and weeping. His eyes flicker, his gaze going from the wound to my face and back again. Fresh air hits it and it feels like it’s hurting all over again, a new ache sounding off deep in my palm.
“Don’t worry,” he says, and his fingers brush over the injury, light and feathery. I gasp, my head spinning. “That’s why I said you should be sitting,” he growls softly in my ear as he catches me, my legs giving out. He lowers me to the ground carefully, his hand stroking my cheek. “Relax.”
“Wh-what are you doing?”
He doesn’t answer me. Instead, his free hand pulls out a tiny silver knife. It glints in the sunlight, and the blade is barely the size of a toothpick. He brings it to his own hand and presses the sharp tip of it against his thumb. Blood wells, thick and dark, and a moment later he smears it over my palm.
A shock of heat and electricity travels up my arm and down into the rest of my body. I can’t help the soft moan that leaves my mouth, and the man above me, his hair tumbling over his forehead and into his eyes, looks... hungry. He shakes his head, his golden eyes blinking slowly.
“Why do they call you Katydid?”
His question throws me, and I blink at him, my mind fuzzy and warm.
“What?”
“Your family,” he says, and he runs a hand over the cut in his thumb. It should hurt, but instead my palm just numbs, like I can barely feel it, the pain far in the distance. But my head is misty, my vision blurry at the edges.
“It’s Katy—“ I reply automatically, because only close family and friends get to call me Katydid. Wait… “How do you know my name?” I ask, my eyes lifting to his with urgency and confusion. He’s not looking at me directly, instead eyeing up my body. He lifts one of my hands, inspecting my arm for something. Damage, maybe, or jewelry, that he can steal. Joke’s on him. The only thing of value I’m wearing is my necklace, but it’s so old and tarnished it doesn’t look like much.
He looks up at me.
“It’s not important,” he says, his voice dropping an octave. He’s staring at me like I’m a meal, and I’ve been served. “But why are you named after a bug?”
“Katydid. Katydid. KATYDID.”My sister’s voice echoes in my mind, from somewhere off along the horizon.
“Why are you named after a bug, Katydid?” He asks again, and he leans forward. His hair falls over his eyes, and he brushes it aside.
“I... how did you know?” I feel like I’m repeating myself, am I? I’m not sure. My memories feel off, glassy, like they’re being viewed through rippling water. Everything is distorted. I look down at my hand. The cut doesn’t look like it was too bad. Why did it hurt so much then?
“I heard your sister yelling at you out back a few days ago,” he says. My eyes narrow, and he finally meets my gaze. A rueful smile tugs at his mouth. “I’d lie and say I was in the neighborhood, but I was doing recon.”
Something in the back of my mind feels like it’s snapping into place, as he wraps a new bandage around my hand, tying it off and tucking the free end under. As he does, the oxygen flood my brain and everything comes back into clear focus.
He pockets the black case and pushes my hand against my chest, so I can hold it there, close.
“Comforting,” I snipe, as he lifts up my other arm, turning my hand over to the sunlight so he can glance at it. “What?” I demand, prickly feeling coming over the back of my neck. I should pull away, but his touch is… nice. Non-offensive, almost clinical, even caring. Like he’s checking me for cracks or breaks, so he can put me back together.
“Just making sure you’re not marked,” he says calmly, as if that makes any sort of sense, and there’s that stupid even tone of his again like he knows how in control of this situation is, and that I couldn’t fight him off if I wanted to.
Which… even after the last forty-five minutes of my life, I’m not sure I want to. My stomach is clenched, and I’m scared of what I left behind, and he seems to have answers that I’m hoping he’ll share with me.
“Marked?” I ask, detesting how much my voice wobbles. I should just hit the road, start walking, get the hell back to my sister, and make sure she’s okay. He keeps looking over me, not answering my question (which is becoming an annoying habit of his), and there’s a weird sort of heat rising to my skin as he examines me closely.
Those liquid gold eyes of his shift from my body up to my face, and I’m caught in them. The air goes still around us, and icy heat floods my face. My heart’s thudding its way up into my throat, wedging itself in there like it has something to say, and I swallow. Firmly.
“Don’t you want to be more than you are?” he asks, his voice a weighty thrum in my ears — not unlike our bar’s jukebox purring out a low smoky ballad, late at night after everything’s closed down and shut off for the day. “Can’t you see… how much more you are?”
There’s a gaping, aching honesty in his words, a rawness that leave me breathless and restless and disoriented. Emotionally, it almost feels like he’s lifting me up, but… to where? For what purpose?
