“Let me help you.” I start looking through the vanity cabinet for bandages and antiseptic.
I notice a smear darkens the collar of his shirt. His knuckles are bruised, and his hair is a mess. Not to mention his eyes are wild and unfocused.
“What the hell happened?” I whisper.
“Nothing,” he rasps. “Go back to bed. Please.”
“Not a chance,” I argue. “You look like you clawed out of a grave.”
“I said go to bed, Scarlett.” He says my name like I’m a burden.
“Cormac.” I catch his arm and flinch at how his muscles turn to steel in my hand. “You’re hurt.”
“It’s not my blood.” His jaw flexes as if that’s supposed to comfort me.
I blink and catch my breath. “That doesn’t make me feel too much better!”
After he finishes washing his hands, our eyes meet again. I notice a bruise forming under one eye and a cut on the bridge of his nose. The tension in his shoulders is coiled so tight he might shatter if I touch him in the wrong spot.
“Sit,” I demand.
“I’m fine.”
“Sit anyway, damn it. I’m your fucking wife. You have to obey me, it was in our vows.”
That gets an eyebrow arching. “I don’t recall agreeing to obey you.”
“That was the idea.”
His nostrils flare like he wants to argue, but something in him falters. That moment of surrender hits him. When it just gets too exhausting to argue.
“Sitting.” He lowers himself onto the toilet lid, shoulders slumped.
I find what I need from the medicine cabinet, but I have to wonder why this one bathroom is stocked to the hilt, and his bathroom vanity in the bedroom is practically empty. He’s arrived back here, hurt and bloody before. And knew this was the best place to clean up, right by the front door and not drag blood splatter through the rest ofthe condo.
I learned things like this from being on crime scenes and listening to detectives.
I kneel in front of him. “Just hold still.”
“Holding.” His knees cage me in, so close my skin buzzes with awareness.
I use hydrogen peroxide to clean the blood from his knuckles and other places I see on his skin. “We need to burn these clothes.”
He shakes his head. “No one is looking for me, Scarlett. No one who can hurt us.”
“Whose blood is this?” I try to keep it light, but my voice trembles.
“Scarlett.” My name breaks out of him like a warning.
“You don’t have to tell me everything.” I wrap his hand gently with gauze. “Just…don’t lie to me.”
For a moment, he holds his breath. Then he exhales, slow and brutal. “I’m doing something I shouldn’t be doing,” he admits. “Something I promised myself I was done with. Especially after we got married.”
“Were you out using?”
“No.” He oddly laughs. “That part of my life is over. I will never touch a substance again.”
There’s a cold weight in my stomach. “And can this thing you’re doing getyoukilled instead of the person who lost all this blood?”