Page 15 of Never Bound

“Keep it,” I’d said. “I don’t do hats. Not with this hair. But you know the brim goes in the front, right?”

Well, the effect was very “foreigner trying to look American,” but it didn’t matter when the light here seemed to want to make love to him. Hell, the lighteverywhereseemed to want to make love to him. I myself wanted to paint him, even though I hadn’t picked up a paintbrush since seventh-grade art class. The bright sunset colors contrasted with the soft white T-shirt that clung lovingly to his biceps the way his shirts always did no matter what size they happened to be. The worn-in pair of jeans he had thrown on, sitting low on his hips, was evenmoredistracting. And it hadn’t beenhisidea to straddle the chaise, but I was glad we did, even if it meant I had to keep looking away from the space between his legs to keep from blushing crimson myself. And he knew it. Good God, of course he did.

Upon arriving home, I’d been instantly amazed by the freedom that came with having three fewer people in the house. For one, I could breathe, and for two, I could run immediately out to the garden, into the shelter of the velvet mesquite tree, and seehimbefore anyone else, his eyes as hungry and relieved as if we’d been separated for years instead of hours. And then my fingers were arched over his powerful shoulders andhisfingers were softly brushing across the back pockets of my denim shorts, and all the trials of the day seemed to melt into nothing much at all.

“Thank you,”I’d whispered, pressing a featherlight kiss to his lips. The exam results would show up soon enough. For now, nothing more needed to be asked or said.

In the meantime, his hair was still damp from the outdoor shower behind the shed, and I breathed him in, soap and rainwater and the desert itself, as if it had finally taken in this foreign boy as one of its own. But why, ifI’dbeen tested that day—in more ways than one—washeholding on to me like it was the last chance he thought he’d ever get?

Then I saw the blood. Vermilion streaks trailing down his wrists like tears, and I immediately threw down the bags I was carrying and went for the first aid supplies. Shouldn’t I put my rudimentary medical skills to use helping the only person who was working as hard as I was to make sure I passed my course?

So far, he’d been an uncharacteristically quiet patient, watching as I clumsily struggled to unroll and wind the gauze. Whatever his mind was dwelling on, it was very far from the cuts on his palm.

And so was mine. I recalled how utterly deranged my ex-wannabe-boyfriend had sounded as he’d hurled abuse across a river of baffled students. I’d seen now that Corey was petty, jealous, vindictive, and cruel, but not, to my knowledge, dangerous. However, the proof that hecouldbe was now staring up at me from the scabbed and bloody palm I held.

And why? Because Corey felt his rival had not only stolen—for lack of a less offensive term—me, but his job. But how? It wasn’t like Langer could fire Corey and replace him with a slave. But if Corey somehow thought he could, it didn’t matter. Booze-bloated wreck or not, Corey still had power over both of us. And as long as the world was what it was, it would stay that way.

But the boy in front of me, his forehead almost touching mine, already knew that.

“You need to be more careful,” I whispered, unwilling to let the mention of Corey ruin a moment I had been waiting all day for. “Not just about your hands, I mean. About everything.”

He looked down at his wounds, his eyes flicking back up to meet mine. “I know.”

I snipped off the end of the gauze and struggled to affix it in place, mostly succeeding in only taping my own fingers together. “Sorry, but I think it might be hard for you to hold a pen for a while.”

“After today, I might not have to,” he said. “It might be gardening from here on out.”

“Well, you are going to keep tutoring me, aren’t you?” I asked. “I still have the final and a whole second semester of o-chem ahead of me. Unless you think I’ll fail and Daddy will take it out on you, and—” My mind was going places it shouldn’t.

He looked at me seriously. “That is not going to happen.”

“Which one, me failing or—”

“Any of it,” he cut me off. “Don’t talk like that. Anyway, gardening isn’t a total waste of time. We got rid of the javelinas.”

I blinked. “Javelinas?”

He seemed startled as if afraid he’d gotten his facts wrong—for him, a fate worse than death, I suspected. “Javelinas? Wild pigs? That is a thing here, isn’t it? It wasn’t just some delusion my feverish brain conjured up while I was passing out from blood loss?”

“No, of course they’re a thing,” I reassured him. “I just didn’t realize that was what the fence was for. Those things are the stuff of nightmares, I swear. They have ridiculously sharp teeth and when we had our dog, they used to chase her out of the garden and she wouldn’t come back for days. And that’s on top of tearing up the yard and shitting everywhere.”

“The desert really is a magical place, isn’t it?” he remarked.

“I saw the fence,” I said amid a giggle. “You got all that done in one day?”

The fence, with all of its precise spacing and neat angles, had looked like more than the day’s work of one person. Even one who had been forced to learn a thing or two about building things over the years.

“No. Just some of the holes and wire,” he admitted. “Langer’s guys did everything else.”

My insides churned at the sound of the name of the man who seemed to have his hand in everything these days. “Langer’s guys?Why?”

“Because he likes me,” he said, dropping his eyes and absently picking at the edge of the gauze. “Which I understand, naturally,” he remarked. “Or Icould, if I liked him. But I don’t.”

“So what does he want with you?” No, Langer couldn’t hire him. But there was one thing he could do. My heart skipped. I almost couldn’t bring myself to speak the words. “Was Langer here? Did he say anything about—”

“No,” he said quickly, though I wasn’t exactly sure what question he was answering. I didn’t want to know. “Does—does he want to buy you?”

“No.”

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