She scoots up next to me on the couch and starts daubing blood off my face with the paper towels. Some of the clots break, and I feel fresh blood rolling down my cheekbone, but she catches it, making a soft “shhh” sound like I’m a kid who needs to be comforted. I find it strangely reassuring.
“This is awful,” she mutters as she carefully cleans me up. She’s grabbed a first-aid kit from somewhere—maybe a cabinet in the bathroom, I don’t know—and opens it, sorting through its contents. There’s some antiseptic and bandages, gauze, little packets of ibuprofen. She applies the antiseptic, which stings like fuck, and then carefully tapes me up with Band-Aids and gauze. I probably need stitches, or at least some butterfly clips. Staples. Super Glue. Something.
It’s not until she shifts her attention to my banged-up hands that I get a glimpse of the look on her face. There are tears on her cheeks that she’s been ignoring. I reach up and wipe them away. My touch seems to break something in her; she chokes back a sob.
“Oh, Cain, this is my fault. I should never have…” She breaks off, closes her eyes, and I can tell she’s focusing all her strength on getting herself back under control. When she opens her eyes again, she turns her face down and fixes her gaze on my bloody knuckles.
I lean forward and kiss the top of her head, then stroke her hair with the hand she’s not working on. “Hush. We made this decision together. It’s not your fault.”
“Yes, it is.”
“You think you forced me to say ‘I do’? You think you’re even capable of forcing me to do that?” I let my tone turn light. “Or anything, for that matter.”
She manages a slight smile. Good girl. “No. But I convinced you Pop would leave you alone if we got married, and now look at you.”
I shrug. “I’ve had worse.”
She shakes her head. She’s rubbing the cuts on my knuckles a little too hard, and I wince. “Sorry,” she says, then, “But there’ll be more. He’s not going to let this go. You’re in danger, I’m in danger—I mean, we both were before, but this has just made everything worse.” Finally she tosses down the bloody paper towel and puts her face in her hands. “Goddammit, Cain, I fucked everything up. Can’t you see that?”
I take her shoulders gently in my hands and lift her so she’s looking into my face. “Look,” I say, “I’m not going to divorce you, or get an annulment, or anything else just to placate your fucking father. I’m sick and fucking tired of having someone else tell me how I’m going to live. I’m particularly sick and tired of having that someone be fucking Phil Spada.”
“Cain…”
But I’m not done. I put a finger over her lips. “I don’t care what we have to do. We can move out of state. Fuck, we can leave the goddamn country—I don’t care. Whatever it takes to get away from him. To get you away from him. I want you safe. I want out from under his thumb. And most of all, I just want to be with you.”
The tears are sheeting down her cheeks now, but she’s not sobbing. A vague smile makes its way onto her mouth. “I thought this was just an arrangement.”
I shrug. “Whatever.” I’m not ready to make any emotional declarations. I’m not sure I know how. But I cup her face again, kiss her gently. “I’ve got a bad spot on my ribs. You want to look at it?”
She nods. I pull my shirt off over my head and lean to one side so she can work her magic.
As she carefully explores my ribs—they’re not broken, as I suspected, or even her gentle exploration would have me hitting the ceiling—I realize the pain, the frustration, and the anger are all morphing into something else. My dick is at rigid attention, because of course everything boils right down to sex with me. Or at least with my dick. Even the shards of pain as her fingers press into my skin are doing nothing but making me that much hornier.
“Nothing’s broken,” she says unnecessarily, although she doesn’t know I already figured that out. “Do you want me to wrap this up and maybe make you a sling, or—”
I grab her and kiss her before I can tell her no, I do not want a fucking sling. Her mouth is soft and yielding, then harder as she responds. She reaches up, her fingers clamping on my biceps.
Tipping her head back just enough, she manages, “Cain… You’re hurt. Maybe we shouldn’t…”
“Fuck that,” I growl, and kiss her again. In spite of the discomfort of my ribs, the aches in my hands, and the throbbing in my head, I stand and swing her up into my arms. Because couch or no couch, there’s no fucking way in hell I’m having sex with her in the ladies’ bathroom.