Sarah never looked at him as she answered. “It needs to be thoroughly cleaned. I’ll take care of it.” She wrapped a bandage around her foot after applying several layers of gauze directly to the cut.
Dante gaped as she stood and carefully started mopping up blood from the floor and picking up the large pieces of glass. “Leave it!” he ordered in a low, dangerous voice. He got up, wrapped his arm around her waist, and lifted her feet off the floor, unable to stop a low groan of pain from leaving his lips as he took her weight and her body collided against his chest when he swung her away from the glass. He was panting as he lowered her feet back to the ground, but he didn’t loosen his hold around her waist. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you, Sarah. I only wanted to get rid of the pills. I didn’t mean to hit the glass. I didn’t mean for it to break.” Shit. He was babbling like an idiot, but for some reason it was important to him that she understood that hurting her wasn’t intentional.
She moved away from him as she muttered, “I’m sure you didn’t.” But she didn’t sound completely convinced.
Dante followed her as she grabbed her purse from the living room and slipped her bandaged feet into her sandals at the door. After pulling the door open, she looked back at him. “Look, I understand that you lost your partner, and I’m sorry for that. But think about Patrick, Detective Sinclair. Would he want you to be doing this to yourself, acting this way? If you had been the one who died, would you want him to behave the way you’re behaving now? You’re not helping your partner right now.”
“I didn’t mean for you to cut yourself,” Dante grumbled, still concerned about the blood he’d seen on her foot.
Sarah shot him a stubborn look. “If you’re really sorry, take the damn pills.” Without another word, she left, pulling the door closed behind her.
Incredulous that Sarah had just walked out on her injured foot, Dante moved forward and yanked the door back open just in time to see her get into her car and head back down the driveway.
“Damn stubborn woman,” Dante muttered irritably, unable to shake off the guilt of what he’d unintentionally done to her.
Would Patrick want him to act like an idiot? Hell no, he wouldn’t. His partner would have chewed his ass about getting his temper under control and made him stop doing stupid shit that was self-destructive. In their early days as partners, Patrick had jerked Dante forcibly back more than once from acting on emotion, and Dante had learned the lesson quickly enough back then. Over the years, Dante had learned to keep a lid on his anger, knowing one stupid action could jeopardize an investigation.
Back in the kitchen, he slowly cleaned up the mess on the kitchen floor, cringing as he removed every droplet of blood from the tiles. He was panting by the time he finished.
You’re breathing short and shallow.
Annoyed that Sarah Baxter’s words kept haunting him, he took a deep breath and coughed hard, grabbing on to the edge of the cupboard to keep his balance as a pain so sharp and excruciating that he almost lost consciousness lanced through his chest. He was definitely seeing stars.
I’m an asshole. If I really wanted to torture myself, all I had to do was cough!
He could have saved himself the effort of going downstairs to the basement and lifting weights just by taking a deep breath or coughing. It sure as hell hurt just as badly—probably worse. Dante wasn’t certain what the hell he’d been thinking when he’d done that. Truth was, he hadn’t really been thinking. He’d been reacting. Maybe he’d been hoping the pain would keep him numb, stop him from thinking, reliving every moment of Patrick’s death.
Would he want you to be doing this, acting this way?