“My back’s just fine. There’s nothing there you need to concern yourself with,” he said in a hard tone.
“Sully. I mean it. Turn around.” Lord knows I sounded ready to do him some damage myself. It could have been the determination in my voice, or it could have been the fact that he’d lost a lot of blood and he didn’t have the energy to argue, but Sully actually did as I told him, slowly turning to face the wall he’d been leaning against, bracing both hands against the plasterwork so I could see the magnitude of the scar that spread up and onto his back, sweeping up almost to his shoulder. Twisted, puckered skin. Brilliant red and dark pink. It was healed, quite an old injury, but it looked like it had caused him a great deal of pain at one point.
“Pretty, ain’t it?” Sully asked. He didn’t sound bitter, or angry. He sounded resigned. Empty.
“Damn, Sully. I don’t even know what to say.”
“Good. Then how about you don’t say anything, and we move on.”
“How?”
He shrugged. “An accident.”
“What kind of an accident?”
Sully leaned forward even further, until his forehead was pressed up against the wall. His eyes closed. He seemed so tired. “One that involved fire, obviously.”
“How old were you?”
A long silence. And then, softly: “Old enough to know better.”
He clearly didn’t want to talk about it anymore, but I couldn’t let it go. Not without a proper explanation. Fielding’s words were still ringing in my ears, and I couldn’t help but panic. Was this a prime example of Sully trying to throw his life away, or was it something else entirely? “Was it your fault?” I asked. “Could you have prevented this, if you’d wanted to?”
Sully looked back at me sharply. He didn’t reply straight away. “I might have been able to. But the cost of preventing this injury would have been far greater than a few inches of burned skin.”
“It’s more than a few inches, Sully. It’s your whole side. Nearly all of your back. It would have been—”
“Painful? Yeah, it smarted a little. Right now, I’m far more preoccupied by the pain in my ribcage and the open wound I’m holding together with my bare hands than something that took place years ago, though. Can you go into the kitchen and find me some alcohol?”
“Drinking probably isn’t the best option at the moment.”
“Not to drink. To sterilize this cut again.”
“Ahh, right. Sorry.” I rushed into the kitchen and started flinging open cupboard doors, trying to remember where he’d produced the whiskey from last night. It took forever to find the shelf where Sully stashed his booze. Grabbing a small, unopened bottle of vodka, I also snatched up a cloth from under the sink, brand new, straight out of the packaging, and took that with me too.
“Here. Will this do?” I showed him what I’d found.
“Yeah, that’s perfect.” Taking both items from me, he cracked the cap off the vodka bottle and poured a liberal amount of the alcohol all over the clean cloth. “If I squeal, don’t think any less of me,” he quipped.
“It’s impossible for me to think any less of you than I already do,” I informed him, pulling a face.
He pulled one back. The second he planted the alcohol soaked material against his side, his eyes looked like they were about to roll back into his head. “Ah, shit. Goddamn it, that stings.”
“Don’t be such a wimp. Here, let me do it.” I took the cloth from him. Sully grumbled, but he didn’t stop me; he placed his hands on the wall again, arching so that his back was curved up toward the ceiling, and he grimaced.
“Make it quick.”
“If I were a cold hearted kind of person who enjoyed seeing others suffer, I might take as much time as possible in this situation. Lucky for you I’m more Maria than sadomasochist, huh?” The sarcasm was thick in my voice as I dabbed efficiently at his bleeding side. Sully closed his eyes and bore it. His body slumped a little, so his head was hanging down in between his arms, but other than that he kept perfectly still while I worked. When I was done, he let go of a shaky, uneven breath and turned to look at me.
“A sadomasochist derives sexual pleasure from inflicting pain on others, Lang.”
Oh, god. Fire exploded in my cheeks, undoubtedly turning them bright red. Perfect. Why was the way he said sexual so, well, sexual? It made me feel like I was squirming inside my own skin.