I took his punishment and gave it back to him, telling him all the things with our kiss that I didn’t understand myself. The coolness of his rings pressed against the skin of my back underneath the hem of my shirt.
Bear pulled back, breathing heavily, staring through me like he could see right into my soul. “You just have to fucking listen to me, but as much as I want to have a conversation with you right now where you tell me what a shit person I am and I tell you that you’re the most anger inducing girl I’d ever laid eyes on. And much as I want to keep my mouth on you, we have another couple of problems I’m gonna need you to help me take care of first before they become bigger problems.” Bear wrapped a muddied hand around my neck and closed the distance between us.
“What?” I asked, trembling under the weight of his stare, somehow forgetting about the dead men lying only feet away from us.
“You know how to sew?”
“That’s an odd question.”
“Not that odd seeing as I’m bleeding out,” Bear said, releasing me and grabbing onto his shoulder. “It’s clean through, just needs some putting back together.”
“Shit. Here,” I said, ripping off my shirt I stood up on my toes to press it to the back of his shoulder blade.
“Fuck,” Bear groaned. I let up on the pressure, thinking I’d hurt him. “Maybe you should let me bleed out. Might be worth it,” he said, licking his lips. I followed his gaze to my naked breasts. My nipples hardened under his stare.
“Fuck, Ti, you may not have pulled the fucking trigger, but I got a feeling you’re going to kill me yet.” His hands settled on my ass, while I tried to stop the bleeding, his fingers kneading into my flesh as I concentrated my efforts on his wound.
“What’s the other thing we have to do?” I asked, feeling the blush burning my cheeks and neck, grateful for the cover of night to hide my embarrassment over being so obviously turned on.
“Cleanup.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Thia
“I can’t go in there,” I said, stopping just short of the front porch steps, my arms crossed over my bare chest.
“Needle and thread,” Bear said, wincing, still holding my bloodied shirt over his shoulder. “Where would I find it?” he asked and I was relieved he wasn’t going to force me inside.
“Sewing room off the kitchen, right on the left. Mama kept that stuff in a tackle box in the draw next to her Singer.”
Bear disappeared into the house, emerging a few minutes later with my mom’s entire tackle box. “No lights,” Bear said, tucking his lighter, which he had been using to guide his way through the dark house, into the pocket of his jeans. Of course there were no lights. The bill was past due before my parents’ deaths, and the dead don’t pay the electric bill. Most of the time, in our house, neither did the living.
He tossed me a blue tank top that he’d gotten from my room and I hurried to cover myself with it. “Thank you,” I said. Bear’s response was a small grunt.
I opened the toolbox on the porch and picked out a flashlight. I clicked the button and thankfully it came to life. “You’ve been here all day and you haven’t gone in yet?” Bear asked, sitting on the top step with his back to me. I shined the light down as Bear picked out what he needed from the tackle box.
“I didn’t plan on coming here at all.”
“Then why come back here?” he asked, pouring vodka from a bottle that I didn’t notice he’d come out with onto the thread. He handed the bottle to me. “Pour this on the back of my shoulder.”
I grabbed the bottle and using the flashlight I was finally able to get a good look at Bear’s wound. He was right it was clean through, but it was much deeper than I’d thought. “Shit,” I said, dropping the flashlight. “Just pour it on, Ti and tell me why you’re here if that wasn’t your plan.”
I shined the light on his wound and for some reason found myself closing my eyes as I tipped the bottle over and poured the alcohol directly into his wound. Every muscle in Bear’s body tensed. “Ti, speak. Now,” Bear said through gritted teeth. He grabbed the bottle from my hand and poured the rest over the hole in the front of his shoulder, bracing his hand on the ledge of the front step he tore off a chunk of the old rotted wood. When he was done he tossed the wood into the yard and set down the bottle, handing me the needle and thread.
“Sheriff Donaldson isn’t in until the afternoon. I was going to go see him, but then I ended up here and I got…distracted.” Distracted was a good term for Ben Carson and his audacity to even step foot onto the grove.