5. Blue
5
Blue
“ T hat’s better.”
His voice is a dark vibration that makes me shiver.
He knows. He knows about Wren. How did I ever think I could get away with this? With a man like him?
“Where do your hands go?” he asks in that low, deceptively controlled tone.
I don’t realize I’ve got my left hand over my right to staunch the bleeding. The cut is deeper than I thought. The one on his neck has already closed. I did more damage to myself than him with my homemade weapon.
“Blue,” he draws out my name, the sound of it menacing on his tongue. This is a powerful man. A dangerous one. What the fuck was I thinking? The others, there were two, they were different, photos of them cheating on their wives. They paid and it was done. This is something else entirely.
I raise my hands and set them at the back of my head. Blood trails down the inside of my arm. I follow his gaze down and see how the bodysuit with its snaps undone, which is already too small and tight, leaves me wholly exposed below my waist. I bring my thighs together.
He slowly drags his gaze to mine. There’s a small, upward curve to his lips that makes something in my stomach flutter. He had his hands on me. The most intimate parts of my body.
He crouches down so we’re almost at eye level.
“Please don’t hurt her. She had nothing to do with this. She doesn’t know anything.”
“She?”
I blink. Was he guessing? Was it a stupid guess and I just gave it away?
His eyes search my face and I take in their silvery-grey shade, the coldness of them. I find I can’t look at them for too long and shift my gaze to study his face, the five o’clock shadow along his jaw, the sharp line of it, the hardness of his mouth. I wonder how he’d look smiling. Handsome, I think. Not kind though. There is nothing kind about this man.
When he reaches out a hand to brush the hair back from my face, I flinch with the contact of skin. He pauses, holds up a finger, raises his eyebrows. His silent instruction for me to be still. His thumb brushes my jaw before his fingers curl around it and gently, which is absurd that I’d think anything this man does to me is gentle, he tilts my face a little so he can get a better look. I’m sure my makeup has worn off. The ugly, still-angry pink scar that spans my cheek is visible. The Frankenstein-like marks my clumsy stitching left.
His eyes narrow. I tug free of his grasp and give a shake of my head, so my hair falls across my left cheek to hide it at least a little.
He meets my gaze, and I find myself staring into those wolfish eyes again. I can’t read him. But he’s trying to read me. He’s curious about the scar or the stitching, probably. Anyone who sees it stares. That’s why I wear such heavy makeup. Well, that and so my dad doesn’t find me. He has friends on the street keeping an eye out for a woman with a hideous scar across her face. Think Bride of Frankenstein.
I’m trying to come up with a smart answer for when he asks but he surprises me when, instead of asking, he reaches for my hand, the one that’s throbbing, still bleeding.
I hold it out for him to see.
He takes it, brings it between us and turns it this way and that to look at the cut, then meets my gaze with a grin on his face.
“We’ll need to stitch that up. It’s not going to close on its own.”
I nod but stop. Him mentioning stitches is the last thing I expect because what’s he going to do, take me to the ER? I doubt it.
“I need to go to the hospital.”
He raises his eyebrows. “Oh, I don’t think so.”
“But—”
“I’ll do my best. Use all my best sewing skills.” My mouth drops open. “Spoiler, I’m not very good.” He winks as he straightens to his full height, which is well over six feet. I’m only five-feet-two-inches and kneeling before him, well, it’s intimidating.
He grins as if reading my mind.
“You’re not sewing me up,” I say.
“I can’t let you bleed to death, can I?”
I shudder at the way he says it. “What are you going to do to me?”
He holds out his hand, palm up. “I just told you. I’m going to sew that closed. Get up, Blue.”
“I mean… After.”
He shrugs a shoulder. “We’ll talk and what I do next, well, that’ll depend on you. Up. I don’t want you bleeding out.”
I follow his gaze to my hand. I don’t think I’ll bleed out, but it doesn’t look like it’ll close on its own. I don’t take his hand but stand on my own, using the table for balance. It takes a minute for the dizziness to pass once I’m up. The ringing starts. I close my eyes, draw a deep breath in, then slowly exhale.
I need to keep it together. For Wren. He hasn’t killed me yet. He hasn’t hurt me, not really. The damage to my hand is self-inflicted.
“Blue, you with me?”
I open my eyes, nod. I eye my sweats on the floor and when I bend to pick them up, he lets me. I pull them on, wincing at the pain in my hand, not bothering with the stupid snaps of the uniform that rode up my crotch anyway.
He gestures for the door, and I take a clumsy step. He catches my arm.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asks.
I swallow, my neck craned to look at him because the top of my head barely comes to his chin.
I try to tug free. “I’m fine.”
“Hm.” He keeps hold of my arm as we walk out of the small room, into the hallway and down the stairs. I take in the dimly lit rooms and all those dust cloths as we make our way into the kitchen. It’s a large, open space with checkered black and white tiles set in a harlequin pattern. A stone island is central with four stools on one side, a stovetop and sink on the other. The driver who brought me here is sitting on one of those stools and from the smell of it, drinking freshly brewed coffee. He’s reading a paper he puts down when he sees us and raises his eyebrows at my captor.
“Dex, if you can head over to the Oakwood Care Cent?—”
“Wait, what?” I cut in, panicked. I step in front of Ezekiel and set my free hand on his chest, not missing how firm and muscled it is. “We’re talking. You said?—”
“Incentive for you to tell the truth.”
“She doesn’t know about any of this. I swear. I swear on my life!”
“Relax, Blue.”
“She won’t understand! She’s not part of this. She’s not?—”
“I said relax.” He takes my elbows and gives them a warning squeeze. “Dex is going to wait in his car in the parking lot. He won’t enter unless he gets a call from me. You understand?”
“Just leave her out of it. All of it. I’ll tell you what you want to know. I promise.”
“Sadly, your promises don’t carry much weight here.” He gestures to Dex who is already folding up his paper. “Go. I’ll be in touch.”
Dex nods and is gone. I try to pull free of Ezekiel to do what I don’t know but his grip hardens as he walks me toward the sink.
“Hey,” he says, forcing me to look at him. “I said relax. You tell me what I want to know, and she’ll be fine.”
I don’t miss the fact that he says, ‘she’ll be fine’ not ‘you’ll both be fine.’
“But if you give me a hard time?—”
“I won’t.”
“I’m glad to hear that. Just a few things to cover before we begin. You and I are alone in this house. The door is locked. The property is vast and surrounded by a twelve-foot stone wall. The gate is closed. Just so we’re all on the same page here. Do not make me chase you. Understand?”
I nod.
“Good.”
He turns me toward the sink and switches on the tap, setting my hand under it. I wince and try to pull away, but he holds it beneath the flow.
“Keep it here. Understand?”
I nod. He lets go and I watch him take off his cloak and drape it over the back of a stool at the counter. He then begins to rifle through several cabinets. A few moments later, he finds what he needs. I turn to see him taking a large first-aid kit out of a cabinet before bending down for something else.
“There won’t be anything in that thing to sew me up,” I say. “You need to take me to the ER.” And from there, I can take off.
“You’re right about the first part,” he says, straightening and pulling out a second, smaller box that I recognize. That makes me queasy. “No idea why Bishop would have had this, but I’ll call it your lucky day,” he says, coming toward me. He nudges me out of the way and scrubs his hands before switching off the water.
I don’t know who Bishop is but that’s not my concern right now.
“It’s fine, you actually don’t need to sew me up,” I say, eyes on the kit as he goes through it. “It’s better already. It’s fine.”
He looks at my hand, which is not fine, takes out one of the gauze bandages and wraps it around the cut. “I’m not going to lie. It’s going to hurt.”
“And let me guess, you’re going to enjoy it.” I hold onto the gauze as he carries both boxes toward the table and sets them down. I notice the bottle of whiskey and the glass.
“Anesthesia,” he says. “It’s old fashioned but better than nothing. Sit.”
“I’ll do it myself,” I say, sitting down. My hand is throbbing, and I feel lightheaded.
“I don’t think so.” He takes the seat across from mine, pours a generous serving of whiskey into the glass and pushes it toward me.
“Drink that.”
“I’m fine.”
“Suit yourself.” He draws his chair closer and takes my hand, gently peeling the gauze from it.
“I really think it’ll be okay without stitches,” I say, my voice higher as the reality that he will actually sew me up hits.
He puts on the gloves included in the pack, unpacks a disinfecting pad, and gently touches it to the skin around the cut. I wince, sucking in a breath, and, keeping his head bent over his work, he lifts his gaze to mine.
“Drink the whiskey, Blue.”
I shake my head, my breathing shallow, my heart racing. “Just do it. Hurry.” Because I know it’s not going to close on its own and I just need to get through this. I grip the edge of my chair with my free hand and watch him take one of the hooked needles out of its package. “Oh God.”
“Afraid of needles?”
“I’m afraid of you with those needles.”
He smiles and it’s the first genuine smile I’ve seen. It somehow calms me and when he sets my hand on his thigh, I feel a strange sensation deep in my stomach. The movement is intimate. Tender almost.
“Like I said, this will hurt,” he tells me, that same smile morphing into something else, making me shake my head at the direction my thoughts just took.
My eyes are locked on the needle. He’s right about it hurting. It’s going to hurt like fucking hell.
I am sure he doesn’t trust that I won’t pull away instinctively and closes one hand over my wrist. He holds that hand in place as he brings the needle with its suturing thread toward the wound.
“Isn’t there glue or something in there?” I ask panicked, tugging at my hand but unable to pull it out of his grasp.
“Sorry, no,” he says not sounding remotely sorry. He doesn’t bother to look up, and, before I can open my mouth to ask if he’s sure, the needle is in.
I bite my lip so hard I taste blood. Tears sting my eyes, and I can’t help the sound I make when he draws it out of the inside of the wound.
He glances up at me. Grins. “Drink the whiskey.”
I shake my head, trying to stop crying. “Please hurry.”
He gets back to work, and I whimper as he draws the needle out of the other side.
“You have to tie it off first. Then do the next one. You have to tie them off?—”
“Shh.” He begins doing just that and I’m not sure if it’s because he’s watched a video or practiced or what, but he is neat and precise, and he’s done with the first stitch sooner than I expect.
“How did you know to do that?” I ask. When I sewed up my face, I was nowhere near as precise nor was I remotely calm. But in my defense, my hands wouldn’t stop shaking and all I had to go on was watching my sister practice on orange peels and a YouTube video on suturing a wound.
He shrugs a shoulder and gestures to the whiskey.
This time, I don’t refuse it because it hurts like hell. So, I drink down the entire glass, swallow it like it’s water even as it burns my throat, and when I’m done, I pour myself a little more and drink that too.
“Good girl,” he says and pushes the needle into my skin again for a second stitch. Nausea has me squeezing my eyes shut. “Did you do your face yourself?” he asks casually.
I nod. “Yes,” I hear myself answer.
“You’re not very good,” he says, almost making me laugh as he draws the needle out of the other end and what would have been a laugh turns into a sad little whimper.
“It hurts. It really hurts.”
“I imagine it does.” He looks up from my hand to my face. “Are you going to pass out?”
I’m sure I look white as a ghost, but I shake my head. I have to think of Wren now. I have to convince this man that I am not a threat to him. Convince him to let me go. And him doing this now, it’s something. He could just let me bleed out, but he’s not.
“What’s your name? Your real name?” he asks, starting on the third stitch. By my calculation, I’ll need at least six, but I have a feeling he can double that count if he wants to.
“Bluebird,” I say.
He looks up, eyebrows high.
“My mom had a thing.”
“Bluebird what?”
“Bluebird Smith.” I rub the tip of my nose with my free arm, then wipe away the involuntary tears he’s forcing.
“Bluebird Smith?” His eyebrows disappear into his hairline but I just nod. “Okay, Bluebird Smith. Tell me. What do you know about the events of the night my father’s car went off a cliff?”