Page 277 of Forbidden Billionaires: Vol. 1
It was strange. He didn't seem hungover at all. Maybe alcoholics didn't get hangovers? But he wasn't really an alcoholic. He wasn't addicted to anything right now. Was he?
"Do you need some Advil or something?"
"No, I'm okay." He reached up toward my face.
"Oh my God, James." I sat up and grabbed his hand. "Your hand is bleeding. Why are you bleeding?!"
"Oh, shit." He ran his hands down his face. "Fuck. I remember that too."
"What happened? James, you need to clean it. It's going to get infected or something." I grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the bathroom.
I opened up a drawer in his vanity and then another. "Do you have peroxide? Or Band-Aids or anything?" I pulled open another drawer.
"No. Penny, I'm fine. Really, it doesn't even hurt." He put his hand on my shoulder. He was smiling at me in the mirror.
"This isn't funny. We were just in the hospital. I don't want to go back. Is Ellen here? Maybe she has something?"
"She doesn't work on the weekends. Penny, it's fine. See?" He moved his hand into a fist and winced.
"Jesus, James." I turned on the water and grabbed the bar of soap. I put his hand underneath the faucet.
He gave a sharp exhale and turned away from me in the mirror.
It didn't seem like it was still bleeding. There was just tons of dried blood on the back of his hand. And it looked like he might be missing a layer of skin on his knuckles. I gently washed away the blood. I turned off the water and patted his hand with one of his fluffy hand towels. He still wasn't looking at me. He was acting guilty. Really, really guilty. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach.
"James, what did you do?"
"Thank you. I'm sorry, I didn't know I was bleeding."
"James."
He looked down at his hand and then back at me. "I wanted to fix it."
I swallowed hard. "Fix what?"
"He touched you. That asshole touched you."
"You didn't. James, you promised me that you wouldn't hurt him."
"I didn't promise you that I wouldn't hurt him. I told you exactly what I was going to do. I said I was going to punch him in the face. And that's what I did."
"You said you were going to call Joe. This wasn't the way to fix it."
"He shouldn't have touched you."
"He's probably going to the dean right now. Or calling the cops on you."
"Trust me, he's not."
"What does that mean? Can he not move or something?"
James laughed. "No. I just made it very clear that I'd visit him again."
"You threatened him?"
"You don't understand."
"Obviously. Because there was another way to handle this. So you're right, I don't understand why you got drunk and beat up another professor. Why would you do that?"
