Page 79 of The Worst Kind of Promise
I quietly enter my bedroom in case Faye is sleeping, and I shut the door and lock it.
I hear her voice before my head turns toward her.
“Hey, you’re—oh my God.”
Before I even have a chance to look at her, she’s up and out of the bed, sprinting over to me with fear imbuing her doll-like features.
“Kit, what happened?” Her touch is soft despite the urgency in her movements, big eyes blinking back at me, searching for an answer she isn’t going to like. She looks so small and fragile right now. I know she isn’t. Hell, she’s stronger than I could ever be. And yet, here I am, still feeling the instinctual need to protect her.
I lighten my tone with her—like I always do. “It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing!” she shrieks, half-walking, half-stomping over to the adjoining bathroom, rummaging around in the cabinets with the occasional curse here and there.
“Faye, I’m fine. It’s just a little bleeding,” I reassure her, sitting down on the edge of the bed, keeping my hand elevated and away from the sheets. I thought this part would feel better. But the worry I caused her…it strings me up like putrid meat on a butcher’s hook.
Her barely clothed hips sway in my peripheral as she comes over to me with an armful of gauze and antiseptic, kneeling down and splaying the first aid out on the floor. The corners of her lips are jacked down in a frown, and she refuses to meet my eyes.
“Give me your hand,” she orders, her voice halfway to a full-blown growl.
I carefully unwrap my carmine-stained hand, and a few indigo blooms have swelled up under the skin, coloring the surface of my knuckles a mosaic of gruesome hues. At least the bleeding looks less stark now.
She tucks her lower lip between her teeth, chewing on that one spot in the middle that always feels a little more tender when we kiss. “Jesus, Kit.”
“It doesn’t hurt.” I don’t mention my high pain tolerance or the fact that my adrenaline’s definitely been swaddling my pain receptors.
Faye uncaps the antiseptic and pours some onto a cotton swab, drenching it before dabbing at the splits ribbing my knuckles.
“Fuck,” I hiss, my arm tensing involuntarily.
She continues to clean the area. “Get used to it.”
She’s pissed. Wait until she hears about what actually happened.
The truth wrestles its way out of my throat before I can stop it, and the admittance of it has my face turning as red as the fluid seeping out of me. “It’s Saxon’s.” I don’t know why I suddenly feel like I’m in trouble. I didn’t do anything wrong. Frankly, that asshole is lucky to still have two working legs.
Her hand stills, betrayal shimmering in her eyes. “What?”
My mouth’s watery, and that apparently “nonexistent” guilt is rising faster than the goddamn sea level. “Faye…”
She fastens her gaze on the roll of bandages beside me, unraveling it without saying a word, only showing me her glossed eyes when she moves to wrap my knuckles. Unshed tears ream her lower lids, and her chin wobbles the slightest as her fingers begin to shake in the ribbon of cotton. She makes four circles around the gore-soaked gashes before gingerly tearing the end of the roll off, securing it to the underside of my palm.
As she stands up, so do I.
“Princess, please look at me.” My broken plea seems to get caught between my teeth, bereft of the prior complacency that I was willing to flaunt for anyone who’d look at me. I don’t feel bad for what I did, but I feel bad for making Faye so upset. I thought this is what she wanted. I thought she would be happy.
When she tips her head up, I’m expecting to see a river of tears muddying her perfect complexion, but all that exists is a fervid flicker in her eye, hot enough to melt skin off bone and char her resentment into the very planes of my soul.
“I asked you not to do anything. But you never listen to me.”
How can she be angrier at me than she is at him?
A low-grade headache bludgeons my skull, adding to the slow-rolling anger slinging up each vertebra of my spine. “You weren’t going to do anything about it, Faye! Someone had to give that prick the beating he had coming!”
I’m sure the guys in the living room can hear murmurs of our conversation, but whatever decency or civility I had circles down the drain.
“You always think you’re playing the hero, Kit. You still look at me like Ineedto be saved. I was perfectly fine with moving on, letting my trauma exist in the past, but instead of supporting me through my decision, you went and brought it into the present!” she yells, nostrils flared and jaw pulsing, brutalizing me with each stab of her words.
My own rage disgorges like water from a hot spring, and I dig my fingernails into the freshly applied bandage, my fingers still aching from the altercation. “You would’ve rather me let him walk away? Let him walk away after what hedidto you? So he can go do it to someone else?”
