Page 95 of Unmanageable

Just okay. No legal arguments. No snappy remarks about client boundaries or corporate protocol.

My right hand is starting to throb now, a dull, hot ache spreading across the second and third knuckles where the bone met his jaw. I flex my fingers, the skin tight and sticky with dried blood.

Scottie turns around. Her eyes are massive against the pale skin of her face, her red hair still a messy, wild cloud from the rain and the wind. Her gaze drops down to my hand, staring at the dark red smudges on my skin.

“We need to clean that,” she says. “Cash. Your knuckles. They’re… you’re bleeding.”

“It’s not mine,” I say, looking down at the hand. “Most of it isn’t, anyway. It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine.” She crosses the room to the small bathroom, her shadow long against the wall under the yellow entry light. “Sit down on the edge of the bed. Don’t touch anything.”

I do what I’m told. I drop onto the edge of the mattress, the springs groaning under my weight, and rest my elbows on my knees, staring at the ugly, patterned carpet between my sneakers.

Scottie comes back out of the bathroom carrying a plastic ice bucket filled with cold water, a couple of white motel towels, and a tiny, wrapped bar of generic soap. She sets the bucket on the nightstand and drops to her knees on the floor right between my feet, her knees sinking into the carpet.

“Scottie,” I say, leaning back a little. “Get up. You don’t have to be on the floor.”

“Shut up, Cash,” she mutters, her fingers already reaching out to grasp my wrist. “Just let me do this. Please.”

I freeze, my whole arm going tense as she dips one of the small towels into the cold water. She wrings it out with a wet, twisting motion, then brings the damp cloth down against my split skin.

The cold hits the raw scrape, and I let out a sharp, hissing breath through my teeth, my instinct making me want to pull the hand back. But her grip on my wrist tightens, surprisingly firm, her thumb pressing into the soft skin near my pulse point to keep me still.

“I know,” she whispers, her eyes fixed entirely on her work. “I know it stings. Just hold still.”

She works in silence for two full minutes, her thumb gently moving the cloth across the bruised, swollen skin. She rubs the tiny bar of soap until it lathers, her movements incredibly careful, almost reverent, as she clears away the dark red crust around my knuckles.

She’s breathing through her nose, short, shallow puffs of air that hit the back of my hand every time she leans closer. Her face is so close I can see the tiny, faint freckles across the bridge of her nose that usually hide under her makeup.

She looks so small down there, curled between my sneakers, treating my hand like it’s made of glass.

“Why did you do that?” She doesn’t look up. She just keeps rinsing the towel in the bucket, the water turning a faint, cloudy pink. “You could have broken a finger, Cash. If the coach sees your hand looking like a piece of meat—”

“I don’t care about the coach. I care about you,” I say. “I told you that in the parking lot. I’m not letting anyone talk to you like that. Not while I’m standing there.”

Scottie’s fingers go still against my wrist. She stays frozen for three long seconds, her head bowed. Then, she lets out a breath, her shoulders rising and falling in one jerky motion.

She drops the towel into the bucket and presses her forehead straight into the knee of my sweatpants, her hands remaining locked around my wrist.

“Don’t,” she whispers into the dark fabric, her voice so muffled I can barely catch the shape of the words.

“Don’t what, Scottie?”

“Don’t make me love you.”

My heart does a violent thud against my ribs.

“Scottie,” I say, my voice thick, reaching down with my left hand to catch her under the chin.

I pull her face up, forcing her to look at me. Her eyelashes are wet, her cheeks flushed a dark, painful pink, her lips parted.

I lean down, my head tilting, my mouth moving toward hers to take the space away, to slide back into the heavy, desperate rhythm we found in the front seat of the van.

I’m an inch from her lips when she shifts, her hands coming up to press against my chest, her mouth opening to meet mine.

And then I stop.

The memory hits me like an ice bath—the first night in Philadelphia, the muffled scream, the way her body had been vibrating with a suffocating terror, her green eyes wide and seeing something that wasn’t there.