She’d healed alright. A big pink circle was expected. As were the little dots that ran along it from the stitches. They’d fade. The bullet wound? Probably not. She’d have to find inventive ways to explain that to future doctors and lovers.
I was going to go ahead and pretend that the idea of that last part didn’t sent a jolt of newly familiar jealousy through my system.
“See?” I said when I was finished.
“That’s going to stay ugly, isn’t it?”
“Eh, scars are attractive to the right people.”
“On men, sure,” she agreed, rolling her eyes.
“Into scars, are you?” I asked, thinking of all the ones I had that she might be into.
“Not on myself. I mean, that stupid one on my knee from falling off a merry-go-round as a kid still bothers me,” she told me, making me pull back and look down at her knee.
“This one?” I asked, tracing my finger over the faint gash that was almost skin tone with age. Did a tremble move through her at that barely-there touch? I was pretty sure it did. “That’s nothing,” I said, putting down the tweezers to reach for the scissors again, this time turning my attention to the outside of her thigh.
But I stubbornly stayed put standing between her thighs as I worked, even though the angle made the task more difficult, not easier.
Within a minute or so, I was closing the tweezers around the third to final stitch, finding myself ridiculously disappointed at the idea of almost being done, of having no logical reason to be in her apartment for much longer. Or ever again.
But as soon as I started to pull, her whole body jolted. Then her hand was slapping into my hip, fingers sinking in, as a surprised “Ow,” escaped her.
“That hurts?” I asked, head jerking up to look at her face.
“Yeah,” she said, nodding. Her hand stayed there, holding my hip, and neither of us mentioned it.
“Hmm,” I said, brows pinching as I lowered down closer to her thigh, getting a better look. “Fuck,” I grumbled to myself, pissed that I’d been so distracted by her nearness that I missed how the lower part of the wound was a little puffy and red.
“What?” she asked, tone sharp, worried.
“This is a little infected,” I told her.
“What? It was, like, all healed.”
“Shit can still happen when you have stitches in. Alright. Well. Fuck. I already snipped all of these without realizing,” I told her, shaking my head, beating myself up for being so stupid.
I mean, if it was one of the guys in the Family, that would have been different. But Whitney wasn’t in the Family. And she’d come by the wounds accidentally, through no fault of her own.
I should have been paying closer attention.
“Okay,” Whitney said, forcing her voice to be calm. “So, what now?”
Exhaling hard, I looked up at her.
“I have to take them out. And it’s not going to feel good. And I don’t have shit with me to help with that.”
“Oh,” she said, grimacing. “I, ah, I’m a big baby,” she admitted. “Like, I can’t let it go if I stub my toe in the morning. Or I got a paper cut.”
Yeah, then this was really going to suck for her.
“I’ll be quick,” I assured her.
To that, she took a deep, steadying breath, accepting that there wasn’t really a choice in the matter.
“Okay,” she said, giving me a nod.
“Deep breath. And one, two,” I counted, tugging the first one out at two, wincing as she let out a squeak of pain. And the last two were only going to be worse, being closer to the red, puffy spot. “Three, t—“ Out came the second one. This time, her whole body jerked, and that hand tightened hard on my hip. “I know,” I said, voice soft. “Deep breaths. It will pass,” I assured her. “This is the last one,” I added.