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Chapter 5

Brysen

THE WATER BURNED EVERY place on my body where the skin had ripped off The runoff swirled pink and dingy with leftover parking-lot goo, blood, and gri, the shoas inferno hot, but it felt nice because I was ice cold on the inside

I had no clue as going on, why anyone would want to hurtto explain away the fact that I had al upto take care of h that they wanted to hurt me I never went anywhere, kept my nose clean, and never wandered out of the basic suburban box my life had always existed in, so it didn’t make any sense It was scary, and I didn’t even knohere to start with trying to figure it out For right noas going to let the superhot water wash away asin my bones as it could, and try not to ju hotness No one had clai ti when he was being threatening and up in ar out like a low-burning wick on a candle

He left me a T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants Dovie had left behind when she was staying here with hi on the counter next to the cracked sink and just wrapped myself up in a threadbare towel he had tossed haphazardly on the closed toilet I still needed his help fishing a nice-size rock out of my elbow, and the outside of rater Cleaning it was going to hurt like a bitch and I was going to be buht now I didn’t feel like I had veryI had always been able to fall back on—ue out at hout some of the water I looked like hell, but it fit since I felt like hell

I pulled open the door a fraction and called Race’s nao explore the tiny space he’d brought reen eyes flashing and that di his cheek No boy as as bad as he was should be that beautiful It wasn’t fair So the way he had ditched his button-down shirt and was now only wearing a white wife-beater, and his hair was sticking up in a sexy mess all over his head He had a bottle of peroxide in his hand, along with a clean white towel

“Let’s fix you up”

I nodded and took a step back into the bathroo my lack of clothes and how much I wanted to be all over hiaze scanned overdarker and blacker the more naked skin his eyes took in

“Sit down”

I proppedeyes “Be gentle”

The dark center of his eyes flared and the corners of his sexy mouth turned down

“What’s going on, Brysen? Why is so with you?”

I could only shakeIt was a bad idea because the towel already didn’t offer e, and with each move I made it dipped lower across the swell of my breasts Neither one of us ed Mine rapid, his shallow and raspy

“I don’t know Honestly For the most part, I’m a pretty nice person, I mind my own businessI don’t know” My voice was barely a whisper that quickly turned into a yelp of pain when the white cloth soaked in peroxide hit the raw surface of my knee I jolted so hard, the towel almost fell all the way down

Race closed his eyes briefly and sank to his knees in front of ht fingers and looked me dead in the eye

“The gunshots at the party were about me, not you I was there to collect money, and the kid ed it wasn’t happy about it Why did you think so at you?”

His long fingers softly manipulated the cut I felt him stroke over the rock that was embedded in there still, and then heard him swear under his breath

“I need to find soet that out with”

As he rose effortlessly to his feet and looulped and blinked back tears that suddenly filled my eyes

“I got hoe nu me that I looked pretty and that they were sorry they , like they missed me with a bullet, ya know?”