Chapter 7: Before the Ninth

The office had a first-aid kit the size of a toolbox, and Judd opened it on the roll-top desk and knew where everything was.

He sat me in the swivel chair and pulled the stool up in front of me, so that our knees touched.

I tried not to notice that.

"Palm up," he said.

I held out my right hand.

He cleaned the blister with something that stung, then cut a square of gauze, and I watched the top of his head while he worked.

His hair was dark blond and damp from the sink, and it stuck up at the crown.

"You do this a lot?" I said.

"Kitchen burns. Last summer I had a dishwasher who tried to catch a falling pan." He glanced up and down again. "Hold still."

He wrapped the gauze around my palm and under my thumb, tucking the end in with two fingers.

Then he turned my hand over and held it flat against his, to check the wrap.

His palm was rough and warm and much bigger than mine.

I could see the pale scar at the edge of his sleeve.

It was the hand from the photograph, and it was holding mine.

I had thought of that hand for two days as the thing that would kill me.

I could feel his pulse in his fingertips, against my wrist, going faster than a man's should while he's taping gauze.

Neither of us said anything for a while.

"That's too tight," I said.

"It isn't."

"It's a little tight."

He loosened it half a turn without looking away from my hand.

His thumb stayed where it had been, on the soft place below my palm where my own pulse was.

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