13. Isla
ISLA
There’s a cut above his left eye that won’t stop bleeding.
I’ve been pressing a washcloth against it for the past ten minutes while he lies on my bed, shirtless, looking like he lost a fight with a cement mixer.
That’s basically what happened. His left eye is swollen almost shut.
There’s a bruise along his jaw that’s already turning purple.
His ribs are wrapped in an Ace bandage I found in the bathroom cabinet.
I’m ninety percent sure I applied it wrong, but he didn’t complain when I did it.
It’s either fine, or he’s in too much pain to correct me.
“Stop moving,” I warn when he shifts against the pillow.
“I’m not moving.”
“You just moved.”
“I breathed.”
“Well... breathe quieter.” I dab at the cut again.
I don’t think it’s deep enough for stitches, but I also got my medical knowledge from Google, and a first aid unit in tenth-grade health class.
I’m pretty sure my professional opinion should be taken with several grains of salt.
“I really think you should go to a hospital.”
“We’ve been over this.”
“I know we’ve been over this. I’m going over it again, because you have a face that looks like raw hamburger, and I’m treating it with a washcloth and Neosporin.”
He groans. I can’t tell if it’s from pain or if he’s just annoyed. “Neosporin is fine.”
“Neosporin is for, like, paper cuts. Not for whatever this is.” I wave my hand at his whole situation—the swelling and the bruising, the way he winces every time he takes a full breath. “This is above my pay grade. It’s above most people’s pay grade.”
“You’re doing great.”
“I’m panicking.”
“You’re panicking great.”
I press the washcloth a little harder than necessary, and he hisses, which makes me feel both guilty and just a little bit vindicated. “Sorry,” I whisper.
“No, you’re not,” he counters.
And he’s right. I’m not. I’m furious. I’m terrified, and I’m relieved all at the same time.
All of those things mixed together are expressing themselves as aggressive first aid.
Every time I look at his face and see what they made him do to himself—what he let somebody do to him, for my sake—something hot and sharp twists in my chest, and I have to blink very fast and focus on the cut so I don’t start crying again.
I’ve done enough crying tonight. My tear ducts are officially on strike.
“Can I ask you something?” he grunts, watching me with his one functional eye while I trade the washcloth for a butterfly bandage.
“Go ahead.”
“What happened while they had you?”
I pause with the bandage halfway to his eyebrow. We haven’t actually talked about it yet. There wasn’t time in the truck, mostly because I was too busy trying not to kill both of us. And then we got here, and I went straight into nurse mode because if I stopped moving, I was going to fall apart.
“Honestly?” I press the bandage carefully over the cut and smooth the edges down as gently as possible while making sure the adhesive catches. “It wasn’t as bad as you’d think.”
The look he gives me through his good eye tells me he doesn’t believe a word I’m saying.
“I mean, the trunk was bad,” I admit. “The trunk was horrible. I don’t recommend the trunk.
Zero stars.” I sit back and start organizing the supplies I pulled from the bathroom.
Organizing helps me think. It always has.
“But once they took me out and put me in the chair, it was mostly just sitting there and waiting.”
“They didn’t hurt you?” he asks with an edge to it.
“No. They taped my mouth at one point, but that was later.”
“Why later?”
“Because I was talking too much.”
His right eye blinks before narrowing on me. “You were talking too much?”
“I was actually talking a lot.” I line up the bandage wrappers in a neat row on the nightstand, smallest to largest. “I read somewhere that if you’re ever taken hostage, you should try to humanize yourself to your captors.
Make them see you as a person, not just a bargaining chip. So they’re less likely to...”
I trail off because the end of that sentence is “kill you,” and saying it out loud makes it too real. “Anyway, I told them about the chickens.”
He snorts. “You told your kidnappers about your chickens?”
“In great detail. I told them all their names and their personalities, and how Cardigan’s food-motivated, and how I used to feed Starlight with an eyedropper.
I told them about Brad Pitt and explained the Taylor Swift connection.
I think I even showed them the pictures on my phone before they took it to call you. ”
I can’t fully read his expression as he stares at me, because half his face is swollen. If I had to hazard a guess, I would say he’s somewhere between disbelief and something surprisingly close to adoration.
“There was this one guy with a scar, the one who called you. He actually asked me a question at one point. He asked how old Brad Pitt is. I think he was genuinely curious, or maybe he just wanted me to keep talking so he didn’t have to think about what he was doing.
Either way, I told him the whole backstory. The limp, the droopy comb, all of it.”
“And then they taped your mouth.” Somehow, he doesn’t sound surprised.
“Eventually, yeah. The other guy, the one standing behind me, said something like, ‘For the love of God, shut her up.’ So they taped my mouth. Honestly, by that point, I’d been talking for forty-five minutes. I think I humanized myself plenty.”
I pause, reflecting. “Or I annoyed them into not wanting to deal with me anymore. Either way, it worked.”
He makes a sound that wants to be a laugh but turns into a wince when his ribs remind him what a bad idea that is. “Ow. Don’t make me laugh.”
“I wasn’t trying to. I’m only telling you what happened.”
“So you talked your kidnappers into submission with chicken facts.”
“I used the tools available to me. Not all of us can punch our way out of things.” I hand him a couple of Ibuprofen, and the glass of water from the nightstand. “Here. Take these.”
He swallows them without arguing, which tells me he’s in more pain than he lets on. I watch his throat move when he drinks. He sets the glass down carefully, like even his hands hurt. I guess they would.
He let somebody beat him. He lost for my sake.
I don’t know how to feel about it. I’ve spent my whole life being the person nobody shows up for. Tonight, a man who has never lost a fight let someone break his face because there was a gun at my back, and he couldn’t risk me getting hurt.
That’s the kind of thing that rearranges a girl’s entire life. I’m standing in the middle of the wreckage, trying to figure out which way is up.
I guess whatever is going on in my head is showing up on my face, since he murmurs, “Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like I did something heroic. I lost a fight. No big deal.”
Does he actually believe that? I really hope not.
“You lost a fight on purpose to save my life,” I remind him.
“That’s the most heroic thing anyone has ever done for me.
” I pause, reflecting. “Okay, and that includes the time Grandma chased a raccoon out of the yard with a broom to keep it away from the girls, because she knew it would crush me if they got hurt.”
“With a broom?” he asks, cracking a grin.
“Apparently, she was wearing her nightgown and slippers and waving a broom around like a crazy person. The neighbors called animal control, but by the time they showed up, the raccoon was gone. I got home from class, and Grandma was offering drinks to the guys, who were just trying to leave.” He snickers, and so do I.
“My point is, there aren’t many people in my life willing to go to war for me, so I’m grateful. I’m allowed to be grateful.”
“Yes,” he agrees. “You are.”
I don’t plan what happens next. I want that on the record.
There is no version of me that looks at a man with a swollen eye and bandaged ribs and thinks, yes, this is the moment.
But he’s looking at me with that one good eye, and his hand is resting on my thigh, where I’m sitting next to him on the bed, and something about the warmth of his palm, and the quiet of the room, and the fact that we’re both still alive makes my body decide things before my brain gets a vote.
I lean down and kiss him. Carefully, because his jaw is bruised, and I’m not trying to hurt him worse than he’s already been hurt. He makes a low sound against my mouth, and his hand tightens on my thigh. When I pull back, his eye looks darker than it was a second ago.
“What are you doing?” he murmurs.
“I don’t know yet.” That’s the honest truth. I’m operating without a plan, which is so deeply unlike me. I mean, I make outlines for my outlines. But right now, I’m running on something that has nothing to do with logic and everything to do with the way his breathing just changed.
I kiss his jaw, the side that isn’t bruised.
His neck. The spot under his ear, where I can feel his pulse—it seems faster than it should be for a man who’s supposed to be resting.
My mouth trails down his chest, which is the one part of him that isn’t visibly damaged, and I feel his stomach tighten under my lips when I move lower.
“Isla.” His voice has a warning in it. Not a stop warning, though. More like an are-you-sure.
“Just lie still,” I murmur. “You’re injured. Let me do the work.”
“You don’t have to—”
“If you say that to me one more time, I’m going to smother you with a pillow.” I look up at him from somewhere around his navel. “I want to. Okay?”
He doesn’t argue. His hand comes up to my hair, not guiding, just resting there. Like he wants to touch me but doesn’t want to push.
I can do this. So long as I pretend to be more confident than I feel, it should be fine.
Right? That’s what I have to believe as I pull the waistband of his sweats down, and he lifts his hips to help, then hisses when the movement catches his ribs.
“Don’t move,” I remind him. “I said I’m doing the work. ”