Chapter 15 #3
I planted my right foot firmly on the underwater stone step, pushing my weight up out of the pool. But my skin was slick, and the stone step near the drain line was coated in a thin layer of pool algae.
My foot slipped hard. My center of gravity snapped sideways. I reached out frantically with both hands to catch myself on the concrete wall, but my body swung inward, my right shin dragging viciously against the sharp, broken edge of a cracked coping tile that had lifted along the waterline.
A sharp, blinding line of heat ripped straight down my leg.
It didn’t register as pain at first—it felt like someone had dragged a red-hot wire across my shin.
I gasped, losing my balance completely, and splashed back down into the shallow water with a heavy, humiliating thud, my hands scrambling for the stone ledge.
“Ow!” I cried out, the sound ripped from my throat as the burning pain erupted.
I looked down into the clear blue water. A dark, thick cloud of red was already blooming rapidly from my leg, swirling out into the water like dark ink. The cut was long, spanning from just below my knee down toward my ankle, gaping open under the surface.
“Whoa,” Justin said, taking a fast step back from the edge of the pool. He stared at the water with a look of pure, uncomfortable revulsion. “Dude... is that blood?”
“Ew! Oh my god!” Kelcey squealed, backing away three full paces, her hands flying up to cover her mouth in utter disgust. Her eyes were wide with horror, not for me, but for the messy reality of the blood. “Gross! Justin, don’t get near it, it’s going to get on your shoes!”
“Yeah, man, that’s... that’s a lot of blood,” Justin muttered, shifting his weight farther back onto the patio, looking thoroughly grossed out. “You should probably... like... get a towel or something.”
Neither of them moved or offered help. They stood on the dry concrete, looking at me like I had just done something deeply offensive in front of them, completely paralyzed by their own mild disgust.
Looking up at Justin—at his vacant, repulsed expression, at the way he recoiled from a minor injury like it was contagious—a sudden, sharp wave of clarity hit me through the sting in my leg.
This was the guy Kelcey had traded Rhys for.
This was the boy who couldn’t even reach out a hand when someone was bleeding at his feet.
He was selfish, shallow, and completely useless the second things got remotely uncomfortable.
I gritted my teeth, ignoring them both, and pulled myself awkwardly up onto the dry stone edge, clutching my lower leg with both hands as blood dripped onto the concrete. The sting was sharp, throbbing in time with my racing pulse.
I paused just inside the open doorway of the sliding glass door, glancing down at my bleeding leg and then at the tile floor of the kitchen. I didn’t want to drip blood through Rhys’s house, but what was my other alternative?
“Rhys?” I called softly. There was no response.
The house was so silent, you would think nobody was in here, although I was sure Rhys and Landon had come this way.
At least I knew Rhys’s dad was gone, since he’d let us know he’d gone to do some errands and would bring home dinner.
I raised my voice a little more as I called again, “Rhys? Are you in here?”
Landon and Rhys appeared in the doorway of his dad’s office across the living room. Rhys didn’t look too happy, but his expression cleared as he looked at me, and if I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was happy to see me. I guess he really was a good actor.
“What’s up?” Rhys asked.
“Uh…” I awkwardly turned my leg so they could see the gash. Landon immediately looked a little sick and I realized I probably could have just told them instead of showing it. “I was wondering if you could grab a first-aid kit for me. I don’t want to bleed all over your floor.”
Rhys snorted. “We can practically see your bone and your concern is about getting blood on my floor?”
“It’s a nice floor,” I mumbled, looking at the fancy hardwood.
Not to mention the white and blue rug in the living room that would be totally ruined if I went that way.
I guess the kitchen wouldn’t be so bad since it was tile but I’d still have to get over there.
“And don’t be dramatic, it’s not that deep. ”
“Uh-huh.” He turned to Landon, whose skin looked a little bit green as he stared at the gash. “The first-aid kit is under the sink upstairs, can you grab it?”
Landon nodded, looking all too happy to get away from the blood.
Rhys walked over to me and I thought he was coming over to wait with me or to look at the cut, but in one smooth movement, he wrapped an arm under my legs and picked me up.
I squealed in surprise as I fell against his chest, his other arm supporting under my back.
“What are you doing?” I yelled. Well, I meant to yell. The words came out a little breathless.
“You didn’t want to get blood on my floor,” Rhys said simply.
“So naturally, that meant pick me up and carry me across the house.”
Rhys started walking across the kitchen, carrying me easily as if I weighed nothing.
It only took me a minute to realize he was heading for the washroom over there, the one that had a door backing out into the backyard.
In my panic, it hadn’t even occurred to me that I should have come in through that way so I didn’t drip everywhere.
“We need to clean the blood,” he said.
He used a foot to nudge the door to the bathroom door open.
He didn’t turn on the lights, but he didn’t need to—sunlight was streaming in through the high windows, filling the room with the summer light.
He put me down gently on the counter, then stepped away to rifle through the towel cupboard.
I felt cold without him pressed against me anymore.
“We need to put pressure on the wound,” he said as he returned to my side with a towel in hand. Before I could tell him not to ruin his towel by doing it, he pressed it to the wound and I hissed. His eyes flicked up to my face, a flash of empathy in them as he looked at me. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I said through gritted teeth.
He pushed himself up onto the counter as well, pulling my ankle toward him gently and resting it on his knee.
I remembered vaguely from some first-aid course we had in health class that you were supposed to elevate a wound, so I was sure he was doing the right thing, but it was making my leg all tingly in a strange way.
“What did you cut it on?” Rhys asked. I blinked a few times, trying to get my attention off the way he was pressing the towel against my leg and raised my eyes to his.
“Some piece of tile on the side,” I said. “As I was coming out of the pool, I just scraped my leg on it wrong.”
Rhys’s mouth pulled up in a tiny smile. “We’ll have matching scars.”
“Where’s yours?”
He pulled down the waistband of his shorts slightly to show me his left hip bone, where there was a faint jagged scar. My breath caught in my throat as I stared at it, this new part of Rhys that I’d never seen before.
“It was a couple of years ago,” he said.
Without thinking about it, I leaned forward to take a closer look.
There was a faint, light line that started by the dipping V of his abdomen and disappeared into the edge of his waistband.
Before I could stop myself, I reached a hand out and brushed the top of it with my thumb.
Rhys drew in a sharp breath, and I flicked my gaze up to his.
“Matching scars,” I whispered.
“Now I’ll think of you every time I see it.”
This time, my breath was the one hitching.
The way his eyes bored into mine, the way our breaths stalled, the way I felt like we were the only ones in this entire house for a fleeting moment, it was all so new and foreign and I realized I didn’t hate it.
Not even one bit. It felt so different to when we were locked in that closet across the hall or in the cramped changing room at the mall.
This felt different, better, more intimate.
I leaned in a fraction, my body reacting before my brain could. He mimicked the movement. My heartbeat shot up a fraction.
And then Landon came in through the door.
“Oops,” he said. “Didn’t mean to interrupt the lovebirds.”
I flushed and pulled back completely, while Rhys muttered “shut up, Landon” although there was no heat in his voice.
He let go of his swim shorts to grab it.
The waistband rolled back up, covering the scar again, and I barely held back a sound of disappointment.
Why the heck I was disappointed, I had no idea.
“Here, take over holding the towel,” Rhys told Landon. He waited until Landon’s hand was covering it before he let go and unzipped the first-aid kit to dig through it, pulling out a bottle of something and some bandages. “Is it still bleeding?”
“How am I supposed to know?” Landon asked.
Rhys raised his eyes to look at his friend flatly. “Lifting the towel might be a good first step.”
“It’s fine,” I cut in when Landon looked absolutely disgusted. “I can check.”
“No,” Rhys said, stopping me as I reached out. “The last thing we need is for you to faint at the sight and fall off the counter.”
“You think I’m scared of a little blood?”
“People react badly when it’s their own wounds. I don’t want to have to take you to the hospital and explain to my dad how my girlfriend got concussed at our house. He’ll never let me have people over again.”
Landon seemed convinced by the argument because he lifted the towel to look for himself. His face turned a little green again but he shook his head and said, “Not bleeding.”