Page 36 of Rent a Bad Boy

“You just moved.”

“I breathed.”

“Well... breathe quieter.” I dab at the cut again. I don’t think it’s deep enough for stitches, but I also got my medical knowledge from Google, and a first aid unit in tenth-grade health class. I’m pretty sure my professional opinion should be taken with several grains of salt. “I really think you should go to a hospital.”

“We’ve been over this.”

“I know we’ve been over this. I’m going over it again, because you have a face that looks like raw hamburger, and I’m treating it with a washcloth and Neosporin.”

He groans. I can’t tell if it’s from pain or if he’s just annoyed. “Neosporin is fine.”

“Neosporin is for, like, paper cuts. Not for whatever this is.” I wave my hand at his whole situation—the swelling and the bruising, the way he winces every time he takes a full breath. “This is above my pay grade. It’s above most people’s pay grade.”

“You’re doing great.”

“I’m panicking.”

“You’re panicking great.”

I press the washcloth a little harder than necessary, and he hisses, which makes me feel both guilty and just a little bit vindicated. “Sorry,” I whisper.

“No, you’re not,” he counters.

And he’s right. I’m not. I’m furious. I’m terrified, and I’m relieved all at the same time. All of those things mixed together are expressing themselves as aggressive first aid. Every time I look at his face and see what they made him do to himself—what he let somebody do to him, for my sake—something hot and sharp twists in my chest, and I have to blink very fast and focus on the cut so I don’t start crying again.

I’ve done enough crying tonight. My tear ducts are officially on strike.

“Can I ask you something?” he grunts, watching me with his one functional eye while I trade the washcloth for a butterfly bandage.

“Go ahead.”

“What happened while they had you?”

I pause with the bandage halfway to his eyebrow. We haven’t actually talked about it yet. There wasn’t time in the truck, mostly because I was too busy trying not to kill both of us. And then we got here, and I went straight into nurse mode because if I stopped moving, I was going to fall apart.

“Honestly?” I press the bandage carefully over the cut and smooth the edges down as gently as possible while making sure the adhesive catches. “It wasn’t as bad as you’d think.”

The look he gives me through his good eye tells me he doesn’t believe a word I’m saying.

“I mean, the trunk was bad,” I admit. “The trunk was horrible. I don’t recommend the trunk. Zero stars.” I sit back and start organizing the supplies I pulled from the bathroom. Organizing helps me think. It always has. “But once they took me out and put me in the chair, it was mostly just sitting there and waiting.”

“They didn’t hurt you?” he asks with an edge to it.

“No. They taped my mouth at one point, but that was later.”

“Why later?”

“Because I was talking too much.”

His right eye blinks before narrowing on me. “You were talking too much?”

“I was actually talking a lot.” I line up the bandage wrappers in a neat row on the nightstand, smallest to largest. “I read somewhere that if you’re ever taken hostage, you should try to humanize yourself to your captors. Make them see you as a person, not just a bargaining chip. So they’re less likely to...”

I trail off because the end of that sentence is “kill you,” and saying it out loud makes it too real. “Anyway, I told them about the chickens.”

He snorts. “You told your kidnappers about your chickens?”

“In great detail. I told them all their names and their personalities, and how Cardigan’s food-motivated, and how I used to feed Starlight with an eyedropper. I told them about Brad Pitt and explained the Taylor Swift connection. I think I even showed them the pictures on my phone before they took it to call you.”