Total pages in book: 130
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 126003 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 630(@200wpm)___ 504(@250wpm)___ 420(@300wpm)
Irina hesitates for a moment, her body going rigid, her mouth unwilling to open for me. But when I end that kiss and start a new one, she gives in, just a tiny bit, and drops her tight shoulders, relaxing.
Now I kiss her the way I would kiss Irina. Which is not how I would kiss any other girl because I am not going upstairs with her and there is nothing coming after this but sleep.
A goodnight kiss. Just like I promised. I don’t slip my tongue into her mouth. That’s a proper way to kiss if you’re gonna fuck that girl in the next three minutes. But a better way to kiss, if you’re just sending a nice girl on her way upstairs, is to slip your fingertips into her hair, and pull her a little closer, and then slide one hand down to her waist.
This simple move, one every American boy probably learns by the time he’s fourteen—a move Davis himself bragged about, thereby passing it on to me when I was fourteen myself—wakes her up out of her rigid stupor.
She gasps and takes a step back.
I don’t stop her. My hand slips from her waist and we just stare at each other. I give her a few moments to sort things out, then ask, “Too much? Or too fast?”
She blinks at me. “I’m not sure.”
I nod. “OK. Well, you should probably think that over. Thank you for going to dinner with me. And”—I point to the open door to my bedroom—“that’s me over there. So… I’ll see ya tomorrow.”
Then I turn and walk away.
When I get to my bedroom, I don’t close the door. Not because I think she’s gonna follow me—I don’t think that, and she doesn’t—I just want to know how long she stands there at the bottom of the steps, thinking things through, before retreating to her room.
Six seconds.
And then I hear footsteps.
A crash has me sitting up in bed. An instant later, I’m crossing the floor and grabbing a bat that I keep next to my bedroom door. I wind it up over my shoulder as I come out of the bedroom and look around.
Irina is standing in the middle of the kitchen looking down at her feet. “Shit.”
I lower the bat and place it against the wall. “What are you doing? What’s going on?” There is just one small light on in the living room, so it takes me a moment to realize that she’s dropped something and glass has shattered everywhere. Thick, pink liquid is spreading out under her feet and bright red maraschino cherries dot the concrete floor.
That’s when I notice a large piece of glass is wedged into the fleshy instep of her right foot.
Irina looks up at me with wide eyes. “I jumped. It scared me and I jumped. I couldn’t sleep, so I came down and…” She sighs. “I just wanted some cherries.”
“Don’t move.” I go into my room, put on a pair of shoes, and walk back into the kitchen, flipping on the light. “Fuck, Irina.” Her foot is bleeding good. I walk over to her, the glass crunching under my trainers. Then I pick her up, swing her over, and set her ass down on the counter.
“Hold still. I’m gonna pull out the glass.” I expect an objection or, at the very least, a wince, but she does as she’s told and doesn’t move when I pull the glass straight out of her foot. Blood comes pouring out, streaming all down my hand and dripping on the floor.
I grab a dish towel and wrap it around the wounded foot, holding it tight for a few moments. Then I point at her. “Hold this in place and stay right here. I’ll be back.”
A few moments later I’ve got my first-aid kit, a bowl of hot water, and washcloth. I dip her foot in the water and wash it. Irina says absolutely nothing as I do this. She doesn’t hiss, or wince, or complain. She just sits and watches me with a kind of blank look on her face as I wrap her foot in gauze.
“How many times, Irina?”
“What?” Her eyes snap to mine, like I just pulled her out of a dream.
“Fights. How many times did you kill people in those fights?”
“Nine.”
Nine. I say it my head. It explains a lot. She’s used to bleeding a lot worse than this. So no, she’s not gonna make a big deal about a cut. Or me touching her as I patch her up.
That should be the end of it. It’s a simple equation to solve. But I’ve got one more question. “Who fixed you up after you won?”
“Cort. Well, if I was hurt bad—and I was, six times—Cort would do his best before we left the fight, but Maart was our medic so we’d rush to where he was waiting. No matter where that fight was, Maart always had a makeshift ambulance waiting somewhere close to fix me up. He could fix almost everything. He was like a real doctor. Not just stitches, either. He could set bones, and pop your shoulder back in place, and give you blood transfusions, and—”