Chapter 5: Stitches

Mercy gave us room three at the end of the row, a bed, a basin and a lamp with a crooked shade.

"Nobody comes in," she said. "Not even me, unless somebody screams."

"Nobody's going to scream," I said.

"Then I'll know it's going fine."

She shut the door.

Dacre Vaughn stood in the middle of the little room with his coat off and his sleeve rolled to the shoulder.

The cut I'd put in him was wide and ugly, and it had not stopped bleeding since the river.

"That should have closed by now," he said.

"It's an army knife with a silver edge. Silver cuts close slow, even on you."

"You carry silver," he said.

"I carried a lot of things."

He sat on the edge of the bed with the arm across his knee.

I got the kit from the bathroom, a needle, black thread and a bottle of whiskey that Mercy had left on the sink.

Then I sat on the chair across from him.

"I made the hole," I said. "I'll close it."

"That's kind."

"It isn't," I said. "I don't want you bleeding on my floor."

"It's not your floor."

"It is tonight."

His mouth did the thing at the corner again.

I looked at the wound, and then at his face, and then at the term I had set an hour ago.

No hand on me.

I had said it, and it ran both directions in a room this size.

"I'm going to need to touch you," I said. "That's me saying so."

"Understood."

"Give me your arm."

He gave it to me, palm up.

The skin was hot, hotter than a man's should be, and the muscle under it was solid.

I poured whiskey over the cut and he didn't flinch.

I laid the first stitch in, then the second, then the third.

My fingers were steady.

They always are, at work.

His pulse beat in the inside of his wrist under my thumb, slow and heavy.

When I moved down toward the elbow it jumped.

I noticed it.

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