Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
“Thirty-seven.”
“Thirty-seven years you’ve been on this planet, and you haven’t learned that you don’t use peroxide on a wound?”
“I, ah, I guess,” she said, shaking her head a little. “Why not, though?”
“Because it eats away at the skin as its trying to heal. Don’t over-treat a wound. There’s a reason hospitals use saline, not peroxide. More isn’t always better with this type of shit. You’ll end up delaying healing. It’s not always easy to find saline, and I don’t advise making it yourself. I’ll get some dropped off here later. Clean with fucking saline only.”
“Okay. I can do that,” I agreed, nodding. “Anything else?”
“Not unless it is looking infected. And by that I mean it is looking red or puffy.”
“I know what infected looks like,” she insisted, rolling her eyes at me.
“Hey, with that peroxide comment, I had to make sure.”
“What if it looks infected?”
“Then you need to see me about it.”
“Ah, and how will I do that? If I’m only going to be seeing you once a week, I mean,” she said.
You didn’t fucking give out your goddamn number to someone you were giving hush money to. As much as possible, you never wanted anything to ever be able to trace back to you.
So tell me, then, why the fuck I jotted my number down on the pad above all my instructions?
Clearly, I needed some fucking sleep or something.
“Just for emergencies,” I clarified, as if that made it any better.
“Okay. Ah, thanks. What about showering?”
“What about it? You having shower emergencies?” I asked, unable to stop my gaze from doing a once-over, from imagining those curves under those baggy layers she was hidden under. “You can definitely call me for shower emergencies,” I said without thinking, watching as her lips parted and her eyes widened.
Not in shock or fear.
Nah.
I’d been on the planet long fucking enough to know heat when I saw it on a woman’s face.
That?
That was heat.
As if this situation wasn’t fucked enough to begin with.
“I, uhm, I meant… can I shower? Like can the wounds get wet?”
“Yeah. If you use a mild soap, not that shit with like grit and a ton of garbage in it, it will actually be good to let it rinse over it and keep shit clean in between saline rinsing. Just don’t go overboard. Don’t scrub the spots. Try not to get anything but soap in them.”
“Okay. Good.”
“You got a work shift tonight?” I asked, and the way she seemed to go a little green at the idea answered me before her words could.
“Yeah.”
“That’s gonna suck,” I told her. “A little rest is gonna make that pain really settle in,” I added.
“Gee. Thanks for the pep-talk, Surgeon.”
“Surgeon?” I repeated.
“That’s what Maine called you,” she explained.
Maine.
Christ.
Maybe I shouldn’t have given her the truth. There was a chance she wasn’t going to look into me and my Family. But, then again, I’d never known a woman who couldn’t double as an FBI agent or Private Eye with their investigative skills.
If she was going to uncover my name anyway, what was the harm in telling her myself?
“It’s Salvatore,” I told her. “Surgeon was an old nickname of mine.”
“An apt one, apparently.”
“Listen,” I said, done with my list, and getting to my feet, walking over toward her. “Would you rather I sugar-coat it, and let you find out the hard way, or give you the cold-hard truth from the beginning, so you can mentally prepare for it?”
“I guess the reality,” she admitted. “It wouldn’t hurt for life to, you know, just once be a little softer and kinder,” she said, mostly to herself as she turned away as the coffee machine beeped.
“Kinda hard to find a fairy tale in this day and age, babe,” I said to her back, watching as she rested her forehead on the cupboard for a second before pulling it open and grabbing two mugs.
“Yeah, tell me about it,” she said. “I’m being nice and making you a coffee for not letting me die of bullet wounds,” she told me. “You can bring the cup back with the saline later,” she added, making it clear that she wasn’t inviting me to stay and drink it.
Which was probably a good thing.
Because my mind wasn’t on what it should have been on right about then.
“Appreciate it.”
“How do you take it?”
“Cream and sugar. Extra sugar,” I added. To that, she shot me a smile over her shoulder. “What?”
“Nothing. It’s just… big, scary mafia guys in movies always drink their coffee black, I guess. But I take it the same way,” she added, going into the fridge for the creamer. “Okay. Salvatore, a coffee for the road,” she said as she held the mug out to me.
I Put the Lit in Literature.
Her one had a picture of a raven with the word Nevermore beneath it.
“The blessing and curse of being a teacher,” she said as she caught me looking at them. “Your students help you amass an insane mug collection.”