Chapter 6: Tape

On Wednesday night Lucy announced that she needed ice cream and left the apartment without her wallet.

"Twenty minutes," she said at the door. "Maybe an hour."

She winked at me and was gone.

Nate was sitting at her kitchen table with his sleeves rolled up and a folder of forms.

He had come straight from his shift, still in his uniform pants.

Conway had checked into the twenty-eight-day program on Tuesday, in front of a photographer.

Diane had paid for the photographer.

"Lift your shirt," Nate said. "Just the right side. I need to see the swelling for the police report."

I lifted it.

He did not touch me yet.

He took out his phone and photographed the bruise next to a paper ruler, and then he pulled on gloves.

"Breathe in," he said.

I breathed in.

His fingers pressed along my ribs, one at a time, and I held very still.

It was the first time his hands had been on me in nine years.

It was not the way they used to be on me, and it was not the way Conway's were.

They were careful and warm, and they did not hurry.

He reached the old ridge, the rib that had healed crooked, and his thumb stopped on it.

His breath caught.

I heard it.

"Sorry," he said roughly. "Does that hurt?"

"No."

He did not move his thumb.

I did not move either.

I told myself he was tired.

I told myself paramedics had steady hands and unsteady hours.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Hits You? Suck It Up So I Locked Them in With My Abusive Husband from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.