Page 38 of Meet Cute or Your Money Back

“Ouch!” she shrieks. “Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh?”

“I—I cut myself.” She hisses as if in pain and I glance over again to see her looking down at her palm. “Oh…ow, it’s really bleeding!”

I don’t hesitate and rush over to help as Kenneth is cradling her bleeding hand in his. “This looks deep, Allie,” he says.

“Let me see,” I demand as I come up close to her.

She glares at me, her hazel eyes blazing with anger that would be adorable if she wasn’t fucking bleeding. “It’s fine. I’m fine.” But when she looks back down at the blood running down her wrist, her face pales.

“You don’t look fine,” I say as I guide her to sit down on one of the chairs.

Stubbornly, she refuses and tries to wrench her hand out of mine. “Iamfine. But the sight ofblood makes me woozy.”

“Can I please see the cut?” I say.

“Are you a doctor?” Kenneth asks me.

It takes everything within me not to bare my teeth at the good-for-nothing preppy son of a bitch. “I have EMT training,” I say to him. “Make yourself useful and find me a first aid kit.”

“Of course.” As he rushes off, Allie snorts at me.

“I’m surprised you don’t have a first aid kit on hand.”

I reach into my tuxedo jacket and pull free some tweezers, alcohol swabs, and gauze. “I do,” I say.

“Then why’d you send Kenneth away?”

“Because he looks even paler than you do.” I press on the cut a little, hating that I’m making Allie wince. “Sorry,” I mutter. “There’s some glass in the cut, still. I’m going to have to pull it out.”

Her hand starts trembling in mine, eyes wide and panicked. “Can I at least have some more champagne?”

“Absolutely not. Alcohol thins the blood and makes it so?—”

“Ugh, fine! You’re such a mood killer.”

I sigh, hating how much that insult cuts me. Jenna used to tell me the same thing. Even if she was teasing, I knew there was always a little truth to it. She was the lively, vivacious, fun half of our couple. And I was the killjoy. The bummer. The one who brought the mood down, every time.

I swab the tweezer with one of the alcohol wipes I have. “Look away if you have to,” I say, then as quickly as I can, I dig into the cut with the tweezers, pinch the edge of the glass and pull it free from her wound, ignoring the high-pitched whimper and tightening of Allie’s grip on the table beside us.

“There,” I say, wrapping the blood-soaked shard of glass in a napkin. I press some gauze onto her cut, nowbleeding even more without the obstruction. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” I say as I bandage up her hand. “We’ll wait a bit for the bleeding to stop, then wash it and see if it needs any stitches.”

“Stitches,” she repeats, her eyes locked onto the gauze, rapidly turning scarlet. “No. No stitches.” She moves to stand up out of the chair and sways.

“Allie? Are you okay?”

I barely get the question out before her eyes roll back and she goes down, her head smacking the corner of the table before I can catch her in my arms.

Chapter 12

Allie

The night was a blur after I passed out. I recall waking up a couple of times and looking up into Thatcher’s eyes as he carried me. I grabbed his sleeve, whispering, “Biscuit—someone needs to take care of Biscuit.”

He blinked down at me in surprise. “You’re worried about your dog right now?”

Of course I’m worried about my dog, I wanted to yell.She’s my baby!But I was too groggy and instead found myself laying my head back down on his shoulder and drifting off once more.

---