Chapter Eleven
I HAD IMAGINED so many ways that I would meet Philip again. A chance encounter in a coffee shop. Or more romantic, he might seek me out, impressed and enthralled by the young woman I’d grown into. Having him half-dead outside my door was never what I’d pictured. The reality disturbed and confused me—but most of all it spurred me into action.
I dug around the bottom of the small kitchen cabinet until I came up with a dusty first-aid kit. I’d thrown it into my shopping cart during a trip to Target, alongside the blue daisy comforter set on my bed and the sunshine yellow bath mat in the bathroom.
There were bandages and ointment packets and a very long pair of tweezers. Shit.
Philip hadn’t moved from where I’d dropped him on the bed. I knelt at his side. “Philip?”
He didn’t stir.
“Philip, I really need your help with this.” My voice was shaking. I wanted to be cool and confident in a time of crisis, but I was coming apart here. It felt surreal to even see him again, much less be responsible for keeping him alive.
He let out a low sound. A groan? Was he in pain?
Of course he was in pain, and the expired acetaminophen in this pack wasn’t going to help.
I clasped his hand and shivered at how cold it felt. “Philip, can you hear me at all? Because I’m…I’m afraid. I don’t want you to die and if you’re seriously hurt, I need to call 911.”
If I were a different girl, a more normal girl, I would have already called. But I knew that if Philip had come here, he didn’t want to go to the hospital. He would only have come here to stay off the grid.
He might not have been safe in the hospital—unconscious and unable to defend himself if someone came looking. He didn’t trust cops, and after my experience three summers ago, neither did I.
Still, I couldn’t let him die. If he was this bad, he needed a doctor—maybe a surgeon. I’d rather they saved his life than watch him bleed out on my bed. My hands were already groping at my cell phone where it had fallen on the floor.
I was shaky, but at least there were only three numbers to dial. Nine, then one, then—
Something firm and rough squeezed my wrist, and the phone sprang from my hand. I gasped a little at the pain and surprise of it. My gaze rose to meet dark eyes, still hazy with delirium, but determined too. “No doctors,” he said, his voice thready.
“I don’t know how to help you,” I whispered.
His hand tightened on my arm. “No.”
I wanted to call anyway, to find some help, someone who knew what they were doing. Normally he could overpower me, but in this state he couldn’t. Three years ago I’d been helpless, and now I was right back where I started. Call 9-1-1.
“Half-dead and you’re still bossy,” I murmured instead, reluctant agreement.
His eyes shut in relief—or maybe just pain—and his hand fell away. God, what did I just promise? I had brought an injured man inside my dorm room and agreed to harbor him.
What if he was on the run, hiding from the authorities? I already knew he was a criminal.
But instead of picking the phone back up, I went to work on his suit jacket, slipping the buttons apart, pushing the fabric aside, revealing a bright red stain over his ribs. Panic beat in my chest, but I forced it back.
I was the only one here to help him now. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing but I had to try.
It was hard as hell to take his jacket off, and I bit my lip against the fear that I was hurting him worse. He barely made a sound, but his skin was pale as I shifted him to remove the vest.
The buttons of his shirt seemed like intricate puzzles to my bloodstained, clumsy fingers. Eventually I pulled the fabric aside—and then he did make a sound, a rough grunt that told of infinite pain as the fabric parted from his open wound.
Red. That was all I could see, a mass of red with hints of darkness that I assumed were flesh.
My stomach turned over. I had never been great with blood—or with violence in general. It was part of why I was getting my degree in sociology, so I could help people avoid violence.
I tore open little packets of antiseptic wipes to reveal white squares, no bigger than wet wipes. The pungent smell filled my nostrils, and I sneezed.
A sound came from the bed, and I looked over, already afraid of what I’d see. More pain? More blood? Except his eyes were open again, and the corner of his lips turned up. Not quite a grimace. Not quite a smile either…
He was laughing at me.
Suddenly it struck me as funny too, in a horribly morbid way. Here I was prepared to play nurse to this dangerous man, wholly unqualified, and sneezing at the smell of rubbing alcohol. I laughed hard enough that tears sprang to my eyes, though I couldn’t be entirely sure if they were from amusement or anxiety.
He laughed too, until he groaned and held his side. “Fuck,” he muttered.
That spurred me into action, and for some reason I was a little more steady as I pressed the wipes over his skin. They turned red instantly, immediately soaked with his blood. But they were tougher than they looked, and soon his skin started to appear beneath the wreckage.
By the time I’d cleaned him up, I could see a distinct wound about two inches long. It was thin, and even my untrained eye could tell where it came from.
“Someone stabbed you,” I murmured, hands clenched tight around a mass of red wipes.
It shocked me to see him like this, vulnerable and so damn human. I had known he was wounded as soon as I opened the door, but there was still a part of me that remembered him from three years ago—larger than life and impossibly powerful. The sight of him laid low made something clench in my chest.
He didn’t answer, and I realized his eyes were closed again. He had passed out.
The tears now couldn’t be blamed on laughter anymore. I wasn’t laughing; I was crying. At being helpless, at being scared. All over again.
The first-aid kit didn’t have a needle or anything like that, which was probably for the best. I was likely to do more damage with it than actually help. Instead I used the healing cream and butterfly bandages to hold the wound closed.
Then I pulled his shirt off—which was harder than the suit jacket somehow. It also opened up his wound again so that fresh blood spilled down his side and onto my sheet. It would soak into the mattress too, the same mattress that so many students before me had slept on. They had worried and dreamed on this mattress. They’d gotten high and gotten laid, but I was pretty sure none of them had ever bled out from a knife wound.
There was a first time for everything.
By the time I’d cleaned his wound again, it was pitch-black outside, and I was exhausted. The lines around his mouth showed how much pain he was in, even while he was unconscious.
I took off his black leather shoes and thin black socks. He looked more vulnerable without them.
The comforter with daisies only covered to his waist, leaving his wound open to heal in the stuffy air. His abs were firm even in sleep, ridges leading to a broad chest covered in ink. It was too dark to see the design clearly, but it was broad and bold—like the man himself.
And he was wearing something. A necklace? No. I looked closer. A ring on a chain, a plain platinum bad with no markings. What did it mean? Who did it belong to? I immediately thought of Shelly, because they’d had a thing. Purely financial, to hear her tell it—but it had always been clear to me, even back then, that there was a connection between them, that the reluctant affection cut both ways. Though this ring looked too plain for Shelly, for anything he might have gifted her. He would have given her diamonds and pearls, the weight and perfection equal to her obligation.
Even unconscious, he looked powerful. Invincible. An illusion.
There were smears of dried blood on my hands and forearms that proved that wrong.
A quick shower drenched me to the bone. At least I had my own bathroom instead of a communal one. Then I curled up a sweater as a makeshift pillow and lay down beside the bed.
The sofa would have been more comfortable, even if it was tiny, but I couldn’t bear to be that far away from him. His hand hung over the edge, and I held it as sleep claimed me, hard and fierce.