Elizabeth Finn: Unforgiven

“Ah!” she cried out. “Fuck.” The next shallow stab seared her again, but she could feel the blessed numbness starting to take over the side of her hand, and when he pulled the syringe from her again, moved down the line of her laceration a bit farther, and stuck the needle in once more, the pain was finally faded and distant.

She released a deep sigh as she started to calm. Relaxing was impossible with this man sitting close to her with his knee between her legs. His cheek was near to hers too, but far enough away that she could easily see his focus shift to her eyes every time he stuck the needle in her skin. He was waiting for her reaction, wanting to see her pain. She couldn’t blame him for that, but it didn’t mean she appreciated the emotional torture. But it was a lost cause. She could barely feel the side of her hand now, and once he set the syringe down, he picked up the tweezers and started prodding the skin around the cut.

“Any pain?” He couldn’t possibly care, but she shook her head as she met his gaze quickly. She was bleeding again, though the steady seeping had slowed significantly, and once he’d swabbed the area, he picked up the hemostat, used it to grip the arched needle on the tray, and used the tweezers to lift a flap of skin before stabbing it through with the needle and connecting it with the opposite flap of skin with the dark thread.

She stared at his latex-covered hands as he worked. His hands were as masculine as any, long-fingered and incredibly graceful as they moved quickly, pulling, knotting, and tightening the sutures. It was a well-rehearsed talent, and she almost thought he could do it with his eyes closed. For the first time since finding himself face-to-face with her after five years, his focus seemed aimed at something other than her. Or rather, his focus was on her hand and not on the part of her that left her most vulnerable around him.

She listened to his quiet breathing, and she could almost remember the young man she knew so long ago. Darren was three years older than she, he was handsome—incredibly handsome, and he was smart . . . obviously. But he was good and decent in a way people sometimes questioned even existed in the world anymore. Odd that Bailey could still regard him in such a way, but she knew him—really knew him, the him inside the him, not the man who sat beside her, struggling to stifle his hatred and loathing of her.

“I’m sorry.” She’d actually been thinking the words, not necessarily intending to say them, but she listened to her voice whisper out the apology—so pointless now. He froze with the curved needle embedded through both sides of her flesh, and she watched as a pronounced tremble ran through his hands as the rest of his body stayed unmoving.

“Shut up.” His voice was as quiet as hers, and his steely, cool demeanor was lost for a moment. She glanced to his eyes, and they were already on her, glaring. But that control was lost, and his lips trembled for a moment just as much as his hands had before his jaw clenched tight. “I hate you. Do you understand me? Your apology means shit to me.”

Bailey’s own shaking became violent as his words bit into her heart. It was nothing she didn’t already expect—hell, know—but the words were as painful as his needle stabbing her skin. He returned to his task, but he abandoned it quickly with an annoyed huff. “I suggest you hold still. I’d hate to stab you with this needle somewhere the Lidocaine doesn’t reach.” His glare that she only barely managed to hold for half a second said he was lying. He’d love nothing more than to stab her. A needle, a knife. She could go on, and none of it was pretty.

How she managed to hold still long enough for him to finish was a minor miracle. She held her breath the better portion of the time as her eyes watered. She was damn lucky she hadn’t passed out altogether, but she managed it, letting go of a deep breath as he tied the last knot and clipped the thread. He re-wrapped her hand with new bandages, and he wasted no time snatching up the other syringe, pushing the sleeve of her grungy T-shirt up, swabbing her arm, and sticking her with yet another needle. He watched her face again as he slowly pushed the plunger of the syringe.

After he put the Band-Aid over the injection site, he froze, and his hands dropped to his lap. She could see him staring at the side of her face, but she didn’t have the nerve to look at him. He stayed staring at her, and Bailey started trembling again. The tears she’d been fighting started pricking her eyes again, and she fought with every ounce of herself to keep them hidden from him, but it was no use. When he exhaled a deep breath, he opened his mouth, and her tears fell as she listened to him speak. “I never wanted to hate you. Not ever. You did this.”

Bailey didn’t bother apologizing; she didn’t bother trying to say anything at all. It was impossible with her tears streaming, and the breath she held captive in her chest was the only thing keeping her silent tears from turning to sobs of anguish. She would let him stick her with a thousand needles dipped in alcohol before she allowed herself to feel the pain of his words again.

Nurse Marie pushed the door open at just that moment, took one look at Bailey before her eyes flashed to Darren’s slumped figure sitting in the chair in front of her, and Bailey bolted. She snatched up her bag, grabbed her old hoodie that she’d abandoned on the exam table, and she pushed past Marie on her way out the door. Bailey ignored Marie’s concerned voice trailing after her, and she kept her head down until she’d reached the lobby of the hospital. She used the pay phone to call her mother, and she nearly hung up on her after she told her she was ready to be picked up. Bailey found a tree to stand under in the parking lot, and she waited. It wasn’t near the pick-up zone, but Bailey didn’t want to be any closer to the hospital than absolutely necessary.

This was the hell Bailey had been dreading, the hell she deserved. She was in it, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever get back out of it. Could she live like this for the rest of her life? Taunted and haunted, always running into her ghosts? She wanted to run away, but she couldn’t. Her mother needed her here, and there was just nowhere for her to go. She was trapped in this place, doomed to suffer for her sins.

Six Years Before

“Your turn, Bailey.” The look in Darren’s eyes was taunting, challenging. Bailey was very used to that look, though it had admittedly changed to something a bit different than it was when she was a child. He was flirting. He couldn’t possibly be flirting. There was no reason. His girlfriend-of-the-moment was sitting right beside him, and she was that knock-out type that left little room in the world for the likes of Bailey. Not that Bailey was ugly. She wasn’t, and she wasn’t so filled with self-loathing to try to convince herself otherwise, but she was only twenty-one, and this girl, Trinity if she’d remembered correctly, was older than that. Hell, Darren was twenty-four, and Bailey felt little more than a child compared to them.

“Stop stalling, Bay.” Jess beside her nudged her in the side. She wasn’t stalling, she was aiming. This was a serious, albeit slightly inebriated, game of quarters, for crap’s sake, and Bailey intended to win. That was actually not likely at all, but she was making a show of it anyway.

The shot glass was a good two feet in front of her on the granite countertop of the large kitchen island they were sitting around. It was a beach home in Galveston. They’d rented the stilted home for spring break, and they’d somehow made it half a week without completely trashing it. Of course, the group of fifteen or so other college kids in the living room was threatening that at the moment. How the four of them had managed to bail on their own party was a mystery. They’d just found their way into the kitchen, abandoning the group in the other room. A few they knew from school, and they’d rented a place a few houses down. Others they literally had no idea where they’d even come from. They could apparently smell a party from a mile away and come running, but their small group of four wasn’t concerned with anything but their game of quarters. It was Olympic level at this point after all.