21. Sophie #2
Ethan’s eyes flick to my hood, bunched around my neck. “Did he see your face?”
“No. I had my hood up the whole time. He saw someone who can fight, but that’s all he saw.”
“Good.” There’s an edge in Ethan’s voice I haven’t heard before. “That’s good.”
The flashlights are getting close now. I can make out individual words—perimeter, breach, secure the area.
“Finn, go,” Ethan says. “Now. Take her to the house and stay there until I’m back.”
Finn hesitates, his eyes moving between me and Ethan and the approaching lights, his hand still pressed against my wound.
“Can you walk?” Ethan asks me, though his tone suggests he already knows.
I almost laugh. “Are you kidding me?”
I pull away from Finn and run.
He stays with me the whole way to the house, and lets us in through a side door into the kitchen.
The door swings shut behind us, and the silence hits like a wall after all that noise. Finn stands beside me, shirtless and breathing hard. Neither of us moves or speaks.
“You need stitches,” he says. “We should get you to a hospital.”
“I’m fine.”
I roll my sleeve up to get a better look at the wound. It has clean edges, about three inches long. It’s pretty deep, but it looks clean. The blade missed the tendon and the artery, thankfully. All it needs is a couple of stitches.
“Do you have a suture kit? Antiseptic, gauze?” I ask, still inspecting the cut, pressing the skin around it to see better.
Finn doesn’t answer right away. When I look up, he’s staring at me like I’ve completely lost my mind. “What?” he asks.
“Medical supplies. I’ll stitch it myself.”
“Sophie, you can’t stitch your own arm.” He sounds appalled at the idea, which just irritates me.
“I’ve done it before, Finn. I’m good at it.”
He opens his mouth as if to protest, sees the determination on my face, and closes it, shaking his head slowly.
“First aid kit’s in the bathroom down the hall,” he says. “I’ll get it.”
He disappears down the hall. I lean against the counter and look around. The kitchen is big, a wide island in the center with a white marble top that feels cool against my skin.
Finn comes back with a white first aid case and a folded black t-shirt, which he sets on the counter beside me. He’s pulled on a fresh shirt of his own.
“Yours is...” He nods at my arm.
I look down. The hoodie is soaked through, the fabric cold and stiff against my skin.
“Thanks.”
He flips open the kit. It’s well-stocked, right down to the lidocaine and sutures.
“Ethan insisted,” Finn says. “He worries about the three of us doing something stupid.” He pauses, his eyes dropping to the blood drying on my arm. “Starting to think he had a point.”
I reach back to pull my hoodie off, but the second I lift my injured arm the wound drags and I hiss through my teeth. The blood-stiff fabric snags and holds. I try again, one-handed, and get nowhere.
Finn watches me fight with it for a moment. Then he asks, quietly, “May I?”
No. I want to refuse on reflex. I’ve stitched myself in worse places than a warm kitchen, a stairwell once, the back of a moving van. I was always alone, because that’s just how it’s been.
But I can’t lift it high enough, and the fabric won’t move by itself.
I nod, and I hate that I don’t have a choice.
His hands are warm as they find the hem and lift. He waits while I pull my good arm free, then eases the sleeve down over my injured arm, careful not to drag the fabric across the cut. Then the hoodie comes away and I’m sitting in nothing but my sports bra and leggings.
The cold air isn’t what makes me want to cross my arms over myself.
Finn’s eyes go to my shoulder, to the thick, raised scar that curves from my collarbone toward my back.
I expect him to flinch, or to look at me pityingly, but he just looks away, as if a scar this big and this deep is no more remarkable than a freckle.
“So,” he says, his voice carefully light. “How do we do this?”
I’ll do it myself. The words are right at the tip of my tongue.
Instead, I say, “We clean the wound first, then numb it with the lidocaine, then stitch.” I sit on one of the stools at the island and lay my arm flat on the marble.
“You can help by handing me things and holding the skin when I tell you to.”
“Right.” He pulls up a stool across from me, close enough that our knees almost touch. “Fair warning, I nearly failed biology.”
I nearly smile despite myself.
“You don’t need biology. You just need to follow instructions.”
“That I can do.”
I clean the wound, gritting my teeth against the burn of the antiseptic. Finn passes me gauze without being asked. The lidocaine goes in next, small injections around the wound that leave my arm feeling thick and far away. I flex my fingers, waiting for the numbness to settle.
Finn is close. Close enough that I can feel the warmth coming off him, though he doesn’t seem aware of it at all. He’s watching my hands work, intent, like watching closely enough might make it hurt less.
“How many times have you stitched yourself up?” Finn asks quietly.
“Three. Hold it closed for me.” He does, his fingers pinching the edges of the cut together, and I slide the needle through. “Four, after tonight.”
“And other people?”
“More than I can count.” The needle goes through again, neat and even.
He doesn’t say anything for a while, just watches me pull the thread taut and tie it off.
“How do you do it?” he asks. “All of this. The fighting, the injuries, everything.”
“I do what I have to do,” I say simply.
“That’s not really an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.” Another stitch, another knot. “In my line of work, getting through it is what matters. Everything else comes second.”