by Lexi Cross
With a deep breath, she pulled back onto the road and drove to her apartment building.
***
Fiona and Sophia’s apartment was what people called “shoe-box sized.” She was grateful to have two bedrooms, but there was hardly enough space for the bed and a dresser in each. The kitchen held only a small wooden table and four chairs across from the short counter. The counter space was filled with gadgets—a two-cup coffee maker, toaster, dish rack, microwave, and a small candle. There wasn’t much counter space left for anything else. But it had a window over the sink and the fridge was a decent size. And it was included when she moved in.
The living room was the biggest room, though it was only big enough to hold her couch, a coffee table, and the stand that held the little TV. She’d managed to shove a tall plant in the corner to give the place some life, and a few photos hung on the wall. But the one free corner was full of Sophia’s toys, as was her bedroom. The bathroom had a full-size tub, luckily, with a shower head at the top, and just enough counter space for her to spread out her makeup while she got ready in the morning. Despite its size, she loved it because it was theirs and theirs alone.
She lived on the second floor, and as she looked back at the man in her backseat, she wondered if he’d even be able to get up that many steps. Her parking space was forty feet from the door.
“Are you going to be able to walk?” She turned in her seat to look at him. “I can try to pull closer.”
He looked up at her and blinked, his eye a small split as he coughed again, wincing and holding his side. That was enough to make her decision. She backed out of her parking spot and pulled up as close as she could to the door.
Fiona came around to the back door, opened it, and looked over him. What if her neighbors saw her helping this bloody man to her apartment? She didn’t have much of a choice at this point. He pushed himself up to a sitting position and scooted to the edge of the seat until his feet touched the ground. He tried to stand, but groaned and clutched his stomach where the blood shone red through his shirt.
She leaned in and put her arm around his shoulders, then pulled as he tried to push up. He got to his feet shakily and shuffled a step forward. Fiona positioned herself under his shoulder carefully and he leaned heavily on her to shuffle to the door.
Once she got him inside the stairwell, she leaned him against the railing. “I’m sorry, I have to move my car. I’ll get in trouble if it’s there too long.” Not that her landlord would kick her out over it, and he seemed to like her just fine, but Fiona was somewhat paranoid about messing things up. Or about letting someone down. The years of Sam’s yelling, his control over her every move, living every second to appease him, had done its damage. She was working through it, Sue often playing therapist over coffee in the early mornings before the shop opened, but the instincts to please and the fear of failing were still rampant in her every thought.
She dashed back outside, moved the car back to her spot, and took the blanket from the backseat. When she picked it up, she was horrified to see several blood stains on the tan car interior. How would she explain this to Sophia? For now, she moved the booster seat back over it and hurried back to the building.
Fiona wrapped him in the blanket and took her place again under his shoulder as they went step by shaky step. After the first set of stairs, she wondered if he’d make it up another. But there was nothing else to do but try.
“Almost there. Come on, just a few more steps, you can do it.” She tried to push him up as much as possible, but he was heavy and solid.
Finally, his foot stepped on the landing and he shuffled to her door. She unlocked it, got him in, and relocked it, making sure the deadbolt was secure. Someday, she hoped, she would feel safe. But today, with the added possibility of people coming after this man, was not the day to leave the deadbolt unlocked for even a minute.
“We need to get you cleaned up and bandaged so you don’t bleed to death.” She took him to the bathroom and he slumped to the floor, catching himself on the edge of the tub.
She worried that he might have severe internal bleeding or other damage that she couldn’t do anything about. She didn’t even know if she’d be able to bandage him up well enough to help him. The chance that he would die in her apartment tonight seemed very likely. Maybe she would need to convince him to go to a hospital. She could drive him somewhere far away. She could stay with him and make sure no one came to attack him.
But for now she had to at least try to see what the damage was and how bad. Now she wished she’d never given up her dream of becoming a nurse. But Sam didn’t want a working wife. He wanted someone to stay home and clean the house and cook. Once Sophia came, she’d been happy to do just that and hadn’t thought about her nursing dream since. But now it would have come in handy big time.
“I have to get this jacket off you, okay? Just tell me if I’m hurting you too much.”
He nodded and straightened out his arm so she could pull at his sleeve. The leather was stiff with blood and stuck to his skin. But it was already so shredded. It looked like someone had taken a knife to it, slicing the back into thin pieces.
“I’m just going to cut it off, okay? It’s already torn beyond repair.”
She ran to the kitchen to get scissors and when she came back, knelt by him to cut the jacket from him. Many pieces did stick, requiring her careful hand to peel them away without tugging on his skin. Where the back of the jacket had been slashed, his back was also cut in several long wounds. Most of them had crusted over with blood and didn’t seem to be too deep.
Since his shirt, too, was as damaged as his jacket, she kept going and cut it off. As she peeled away this layer, she could see the many stabs and bruises covering his skin. She had to clench her jaw and swallow hard. The anger welled in her mixing with her disgust of the bloody wounds. Maybe she wouldn’t have made a good nurse after all if she reacted like this to so much blood.
She ran the water in the tub, making sure it wasn’t too hot or too cold. His boots and socks came off easily. Aside from the blood that dripped down his legs, he was unharmed from the waist down. His jeans would be a challenge, though.
“Umm,” she said, standing over him. “Somehow, we have to get your pants off.”
He tried to pull himself up, but as he heaved, he went even paler than he’d been, and he stumbled over to the toilet in time to fall back to his knees and throw up into it. He groaned in pain with every heave, and when he was through, he rested his arms on the toilet seat, his forehead covered in sweat and blood.
“Well, I cut everything else off,” she said. “I guess that’s all we can do at this point.”
She carefully took her scissors and cut along the seams of his pants until he was left in just his boxers. He slid over to the tub, and swung a leg up over the edge to fall into the water with a splash.
Fiona quickly flushed the toilet, not daring to look at the bloodied water as it swooshed out of sight.
“Is the water okay? Too hot or too cold?”
He shook his head and leaned back in the tub. She picked up the wash cloth and started with his face, dabbing carefully around his eyes. He opened them to look at her, his right eye almost swollen shut, but his left eye a glittering green slit beneath thick eye lids.
“Thank you,” he whispered, and let his eyes close.
Once she cleaned his face and scrubbed his short blond hair, she moved down his chest, noticing for the first time how incredibly muscular he was. His lower stomach was a cluster of round muscles, his chest protruding out above it. His arms, too, were thick and round, the lines of his veins bulging out under his skin. He couldn’t have an ounce of fat on him. She didn’t have to do much to his legs, since they soaked in the water, but she ran the wash cloth over them anyway, feeling his hard, wide thighs and calves.
It looked like most of the damage was to his face and back. One leg had a welt on the side. Maybe someone had kicked him to drop him to his knees. In several places, h
is stomach and back were bruised and cut, with his back having the majority of the slashes across the skin. His face had several small cuts, was half purple with bruising, and the swelling seemed to be getting worse.
She let the water out of the tub and grabbed a towel to dry him off. But she’d only gotten past his head and face before the blood from his cuts had made a small pool in the tub around him.
“You’re bleeding too much,” she said. “I think you really should go to the hospital. We can go to one that’s far away if you want. I’ll drive you. But you might have internal bleeding.”
He shook his head. “I have too many enemies. They’ll find me.”
“You’d rather die here?”
“They’ll kill me anyway.”
Fiona rubbed at her face. What could she do? If he didn’t care if he died here, then she’d have to do her best to keep him alive. First, the wounds.
All she had were pink and purple glittered bandages in her bathroom cabinet. Sophia loved them, but they’d be little help to this man. She went into her room and looked around. What could be used as a bandage? Her clean sheets sat in a pile in the corner. She’d come back from washing them at Sue’s yesterday and hadn’t had a chance to stuff them into the narrow hall closet yet. She picked up a pillow case and shook it out. This might be the perfect size.
In the bathroom, she helped him sit up, then took a hand towel, folded it in half, and placed it over his back. It covered the area of the wounds. She wrapped the pillow case around him, tying the corners in the front to keep pressure on the wounds. He groaned when she pulled it tight. Most of the cuts on his face were smaller. She dabbed away the new blood, smeared some ointment on them and covered his face in pink and purple glitter bandages.
“Sorry.” She almost chuckled at the sight. “These are all I have.”
“Least they don’t have kittens on them,” he muttered, pulling the corner of his mouth up.
“Ready to stand up?”
He gripped the sides of the tub and pushed himself up, pausing to tremble as he straightened his legs. His boxer shorts were now soaking wet and covered in blood.
“Umm.” She pulled her mouth to the side. “Those should probably come off.” She pointed to his boxers.
He nodded and she slid them down, trying not to look. But as she used the washcloth to remove the blood that had dripped from his back before she got the bandage in place, she snuck a peek at his front. She was not disappointed. His butt was firm and round.
She set the blanket on the floor for him to step onto and supported his weight as he lifted each leg over the edge of the tub.
They shuffled to her bedroom. He seemed to move even slower now, and she wondered if he was just getting tired and stiff, or if that meant his injuries were worse. She had no idea how internal bleeding worked, or what the signs would be if he were in danger of bleeding to death of unseen wounds.
Please don’t let him die in my apartment, she thought. She pulled back her covers and he slid into her bed. Too bad it wasn’t under better circumstances that she had a sexy naked man in her bed.
She brought him water and he sipped at it, then let his head fall back on the pillow.
“Can I get you anything else?”
“Ice,” he whispered.
“To drink or for your head?”
“Head.”
She went to the kitchen and filled a bag with ice, then wrapped a paper towel around it. Maybe some pain killers would be good, too. She stopped in the bathroom and took her bottle of ibuprofen from the mirror cabinet.
In her room, she carefully set the bag of ice over his worst spots of bruising and put the bottle of pills on the lid of her hamper, which doubled as her bedside table.
“Here are some pain killers, but I don’t know that they’ll help much. Is there anyone I can call for you or anything else you need?”
“No,” he whispered. “Thanks.”
“Okay. I’m going to leave the door open and sleep in the other room, so just call if you need anything.”
He didn’t respond, so she turned out the light and went to the living room to make a call. She dialed the number for Jeanine.
“Hey, hon, everything okay?” Jeanine said when she answered.
“Yeah, sort of. Can you keep Sophia overnight?”
“Sure thing. What’s going on?”
“It’s nothing major.” How much should she tell her? “Just have a sick friend here, and I don’t want Sophia to get it.”
“Oh, sure. No problem. She’s already asleep anyway.”
“Oh, good.” She was relieved that Sophia was sleeping, even if it meant she didn’t get to say goodnight to her. Fiona didn’t think she could handle telling her she’d need to stay there away from her. It was the first night they’d spent apart since they left. But it’d be much worse for Sophia to wake up and find a strange man in her mom’s room, swollen and bloody. How would she ever explain that? “I’ll call in the morning, okay?”
“Have a good night and don’t you go getting sick, either.”
“No, I won’t, thanks.”
She hung up and went to clean up the bathroom. The blanket was still on the floor. It was dark blue in color, but she could see the spots of blood, almost black-looking. Would the stains come out? She ran cool water in the tub and dropped in the blanket, trying to rinse out as much as she could before wringing it and hanging it up on the shower curtain rod.
The floor had a few blood-tinged puddles, which she wiped up with the now pink washcloth. She tried to rinse it out, too, but it had been white and seemed like it would never be again. At least not without some strong bleach. Maybe Sue had some and she could try to soak it next time she went over to do laundry.
She sat down in the living room, exhausted. She didn’t feel like watching TV, but was too keyed up to sleep. Her mind ran back through the night. The man lying there on the ground, how she’d thought he was dead. Getting him into the car, getting him here and cleaned up. He had enemies, he said. Was he just another bad boy like her ex had been?
She thought it was hot in the beginning, the way Sam got into fights and always won. He was so strong and tough. But when those fists had turned toward her, it wasn’t so attractive anymore. She’d realized too late that his anger issues didn’t exclude her and that the way he led his motorcycle club with an iron first was the same way he’d rule her entire life. From the way she did laundry to the way she dressed, who she spent time with, where she went. And if she did something he didn’t like, she paid for it. Usually in bruises. Sometimes in blood.
Fiona still felt ashamed that it had taken her seven years, three and a half of those with Sophia watching, before she got the courage to leave. And the money. She’d had to borrow from her parents, who had little, and had to leave almost everything she owned to get them out of there. But, they were here now, had been for six months.
From what she heard from people back home, Sam already had a new girlfriend. She’d expected him to come looking for her. She did take his child, after all. But when she thought of all the nights he’d screamed at her to make “that baby” shut up, she thought maybe he was glad to be rid of them. Just as well. She sure was glad to be rid of him.
She’d felt so free these last months, even if it had taken most of that time for her to stop looking over her shoulder. Now that this man was here, was she just inviting trouble back in? How badly did these enemies want him dead? What if they showed up at her door?
Fiona went into Sophia’s room and climbed into her bed. She held her little purple bunny close and tried to sleep. But every little sound she heard, she jumped and had to listen carefully for several minutes to see if there was either someone at the door or if the man needed something. It was a good thing tomorrow was her day off. She would have been a zombie with such a late and restless night.
Around 2 a.m. she decided to check on the man. She tip-toed into her room, using only the light of the moon shining through the curtains to see. He was
on his side and looked peaceful enough. She watched him for a moment, saw his chest rising and falling slowly, and felt the relief wash over her. Hopefully in the morning, he’d still be breathing.
Chapter 2
The morning felt late when Fiona opened her eyes. Cuddles, Sophia’s bunny, was on the floor and the room was bright with light. She got up and immediately went to her room to check on him.
The first thing she thought was that he looked too pale. She went to him and put her hand on his shoulder. He felt warm, but not alarmingly so. She shook him gently and whispered, “Hey.”
