13. Noah
Dani rushes me into her bathroom, so she can clean up my wound.
I’m sitting down on the floor and my eyes are tightly shut. I’m trying so hard not to focus on the pain, but it hurts so much. There’s a decent-sized gash on my forehead and it won’t stop bleeding.
I’m in so much fucking pain right now.
She sits down in front me with her legs sticking straight out. “Lean into me.”
I don’t make eye contact with her, but I lean closer to her. My entire body is shaking.
“Hold still.” She takes the damp washcloth, dabbing it on the cut to slow the bleeding.
“It’s hard to hold still when I feel like I just got hit in the face by a freezer door. Oh wait…I did!”
She scoffs. “You’re so fucking dramatic.”
“I’m fucking dramatic? Right. And you aren’t?” I huff, plastering a fake smile on my face. “Hi, I’m Dani. And I cried my ass off?—”
She cuts me off. “I dare you to finish that sentence.”
My lips quiver, attempting to myself back from smirking like crazy. “And I cried my ass off when Noah got a better grade than me on the final essay for English class during sophomore year in high school.”
“Oh, shut up. I deserved a way better grade than you. My essay was so much better than yours and you know it.”
“Did it hurt when I showed you my grade? Did it really hurt?”
She punches me in the arm.
“Ow! Dude, what the fuck?”
“Do I look like a dude to you?” She breathes out. “And that was for being a jackass. Now stop moving. Unless you want to bleed to death.”
I roll my eyes at her.
She tilts my head back a little to examine the cut on my forehead. We fall into an awkward silence for several minutes.
Fuck, her eyes are mesmerizing.
How have I never noticed them before? They’re dark brown and you can barely see her pupils because they’re so dark.
Hello, what am I saying?
Watching her prepare the items to clean my wound, I smile and shift my mouth to the side of my face.
This is when I start to feel her gaze on me.
She looks up and down at me repeatedly all while she’s trying her best to tend to my wound. “What?” She grabs a Q-tip, unscrewing the cap off the tube of antibiotic ointment and applying it to the wound on my forehead.
I look deep into her eyes. “How are you so good at this?”
She answers me without meeting my gaze. “My dad was very clumsy. He’d always injure himself. Whether that was cutting or hitting himself on something. I was his daughter turned self-trained nurse.”
Dani’s face lights up as she smiles at me.
Oh, I don’t know how to feel about this. Usually, when Dani smiled at me, it meant she had something planned up her sleeve. And now, it screams innocence.
I do wonder how I ever found her smile to be annoying.
It’s beautiful.
If I’m being honest here, she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid my eyes on. I’ve always thought that she was beautiful, but I could never tell her that. Not even now.
She stares at me. “What?”
I gulp. “You know I wanted to reach out to you multiple times over the last five years. I never did because I had a feeling you’d hate me even more than you already do.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“You don’t?”
“I just find you slightly irritating.”
I laugh which turns into me getting all choked up.
Her palm rests on top of my thigh, sending shivers down my spine. Looking away, my eyes are rapidly blinking as a physical response.
“Hey,” she says. “You’re going to be okay.”
This cannot be happening right now.
Her gaze meets mine. “Yeah, you know why?”
Studying Dani from her eyes to her torso makes me realize something.
How was I so repulsed by this woman? I never knew I could be hypnotized by a woman who I fought with all the time.
She laughs, brightening up her entire face. “Why?”
“Because you’re here. With me.”