The absurdity of it all sent that deranged laugh bubbling up from my gut again.
This was the opposite of the situation I’d imagined when I’d first woken up. Instead of demanding that I suck his cock to earn my freedom, Holden was practically throwing me out onto the street, and I was the one begging to stay. Some hostage I was.
You could offer to suck him off in exchange for being allowed to stay, suggested an entirely unhelpful voice in the back of my mind.
That would go over like a lead balloon, I was sure. Probably for the best, anyway, as the thought of anything going down my throat right now made me cringe in anticipatory pain. And if Holden’s hands were any indication, he was probably fairly well-endowed.
When I finally looked up, my breathing more or less back to normal, Holden’s eyes had softened.
“Okay,” he said. “A few days. You can stay until you’re feeling better. But if it looks like you’re getting worse at all, it’s straight to the hospital with you.”
I sent him a grateful smile, and wrote, “Thank you so much.”
“Don’t thank me yet, kid. Let’s wait till we know you haven’t perforated a lung or something.”
I bristled. What right did he have to call me kid? He didn’t look that old. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine max. And I wasn’t young. At least, I didn’t feel like I was. Granted, I hadn’t looked in the mirror yet, but I didn’t feel like a teenager.
But Holden was letting me stay, so it probably wasn’t the smartest idea to pick a fight with him right now. I nodded, and did my best not to drown in his eyes or smile too hard when they brightened in sudden curiosity.
“If you’re going to be here for a bit, I probably need to call you something other than kid.”
Crap. He was right. I looked around the room helplessly. What the hell should he call me?
I racked my brain to think of something, because suddenly I couldn’t remember a single name in the English language, let alone my own. Finally, my eyes landed on the book on the desk. I pointed to it.
Holden arched an eyebrow. “You want me to call you Madame Bovary?”
I shook my head and pointed again, trying to make it clearer that I was aiming at the spine.
“Flaubert?” He said, looking even more skeptical. “Gustave?”
I rolled my eyes and grabbed the pen. “Gus.”
His brow creased. “Gus?”
I shrugged. It was as good a name as any. It didn’t feel particularly right, but I didn’t think anything would right now.
“Gus,” Holden repeated, this time smiling a bit. “Okay, Gus it is.”
We were silent then, for a moment, just smiling at each other. It was actually kinda nice. The first time that had happened since I’d woken up. Then he cleared his throat.
“Let’s see what’s in here.”
Holden cracked open the first aid kit and pulled out gauze, Band-Aids, and an old tube of disinfectant cream. He looked back up at me apologetically.
“I don’t know if the cream is expired. I can have—I mean, I’ll see about getting something newer. But in the meantime…” He held up the box of Band-Aids and gave a little shrug. I nodded.
It was weird. I couldn’t see my face, but it was apparently quite cut up. Holden grabbed the tissue box from the desk, dipped a wadded-up tissue in vodka, then brought it to my cheek. I hissed at the sting.
“Sorry,” he said.
He sounded so remorseful that I wanted to tell him it was okay, but, of course, I couldn’t. Not without making a big production of writing it out, which just seemed stupid. So I just did my best to hold still under his touch.
Holden’s touch was surprisingly delicate, and I found myself breathing shallowly. Not from pain, but from how soft his fingers were on my skin, and how close his mouth was to mine as he leaned in to peer at my face, and fuck, I could have melted into a puddle, if, you know, my bones hadn’t felt like they were all trying to pop out of their sockets simultaneously.
He used two fingers to hold my chin and dab at a cut just below the left corner of my lips. I resisted the urge to wet them and stared at his lips instead, at the tiny freckle he had on the right side of his chin, and the thin fuzz of stubble creeping across his jaw.