It wasn’t the right time for small talk, but if Vaughn dropped dead in my bathroom, the only part I’d hate about it would be testifying to the police and the paperwork that came with it. Anyway, he didn’t seem terribly bothered by his state, either.

“Eh, jealousy. Bitterness’ oldest companion. It’s not easy being a genius, let me tell ya. One is the loneliest number.”

“There are literally two of you, Mr. Shit-for-Brains. Rafferty Pope got the internship, too. In fact, I could be his assistant.”

God. Why hadn’t I thought about that earlier? Maybe it was too difficult to swallow being my best friend’s assistant, when we’d been supposed to intern together, side-by-side. But this made perfect sense. I could just text Pope and get it sorted. A Vaughn-free future was a phone call away.

Vaughn smacked his lips.

“The position for Rafferty Pope’s assistant has been filled, I’m afraid.”

“Says who?” I scowled.

“I saw to it myself. Now, about your first assignment…” His eyes sliced back to his bloody shirt.

“No. If you die, I’ll get your internship.”

“If I die, I’ll haunt your ass so good, you’ll be praying ghostbusters are real,” he deadpanned.

“You’ve been skipping school and getting into fights. Why?”

“Your face disgusts me so much, I couldn’t risk running into you.” He ran his icy blue eyes over my body. “And here I am. Irony’s a bitch.”

Disgusted or rattled? I thought, slightly pleased. Because if avoiding me was the reason he’d stopped showing up at school, that meant I’d gotten to him. I flustered him as much as he did me.

I groaned. “Let me see the wound.”

He raised his shirt, exposing bronzed abs and a muscular V. He had a perfect six-pack bulging out of his lean stomach, a narrow waist, and a dusting of dark hair arrowing south of his belly button. A gash sliced through the smooth skin across his side, just above the V. It looked nasty. Like someone had tried to cut him in half.

“Bloody hell,” I muttered.

“Correct, for a fucking change.” He yawned, flicking a gray flake of ash from his knee. He dropped his shirt, eyeing me with mild, amused interest.

“Well?” He raised an eyebrow. “This bitch is not going to stitch itself up. You may want to offer me some alcohol. Not just to clean the area, but to make sure I don’t yank your hair out when you close me up.”

“Just to make sure we have an understanding—I’m not doing this because of the assistant’s job, or because I’m afraid of you like the rest of our pathetic classmates. I’m doing it because I truly believe you’re stupid enough not to go straight to the emergency room, and I don’t want your death on my conscience.”

With that, I got to work. I went downstairs, bringing back a bottle of whiskey—the cheapest I could find—and my sewing kit. When I got back upstairs, Vaughn was listening to my CD player again. I yanked it from his hands, this time placing it on the counter across from the bathtub, where he couldn’t reach it.

My eyes narrowed. “Stop touching my things.”

“Better get used to it, Len. I’ll be touching a lot of your shit when we work together next year.”

I ignored his use of Len, which I hadn’t heard from him before, and tried to kill the butterflies in my stomach as I took a pair of scissors from the sewing kit and lowered myself on one knee, cutting the front of his shirt vertically.

“I didn’t accept your offer yet.” I kept my eyes on the damp, bloodied fabric that soaked my fingertips.

“Don’t embarrass yourself. The only reason you don’t let my ass die in your bathtub is because you want this position.”

I wish that were the case.

When his shirt was a pile of fabric beneath him, I plucked my black towel from the rack above my head and soaked it in whiskey, bringing it to his side.

“Aren’t you going to ask how it happened?” He stared at my face as I worked, not even wincing when I put the alcohol directly to his open wound.

He was particularly chatty today, in a good mood—better than he’d been in weeks. I wondered if fighting was a defense mechanism. If physical pain took away from the mental decay that was nibbling at him every hour of the day.

“No,” I said simply. What if he’d committed a horrible crime? I didn’t want to be involved.

His glacier eyes skimmed my face. “They say you slapped Arabella at her pool party.”

“They need a hobby or a bloody pet,” I said dryly, half-glad the rumor had spread fast and caused an uproar, “if that’s what they’re talking about. I’m not opposed to slapping her again if she tries to mess with my sister, so you can pass the message along to your little girlfriend.”

I loathed myself for inadvertently admitting I knew he’d taken her to Indiana. It was clear they weren’t together, but that apparently didn’t stop me from wanting to hear a denial straight from him.

“You hate her,” he said instead.

“Thanks, Captain Obvious. I wish your superpowers included not getting stabbed and crawling into my house uninvited.” I continued cleaning his wound.

He ran his long finger along the edge of the bathtub between us slowly.

“You know about Indiana.”

I said nothing, but my heart jumped in my chest as I tossed the black towel to the floor.

“My parents called her Mystery Girl, because it was a mystery why I brought her.” His eyes clung to my face, gauging me for a reaction. He wanted me to ask him why.

Over my dead body, boy.

I cleared my throat. “I honestly can’t think of a better match.”

Silence.

“What’s your favorite band?” He changed the subject. He was doing it again—making small talk in the midst of an awkward, violent, insane situation.

I shook my head, plucking out a needle and a thread. I chose green, because I wanted it to stand out. I wanted him to look down at it and remember me in the following weeks. And I didn’t even know why.

“It might leave a scar.” I looked up at him, arching an eyebrow.

He stared at me with a desolate look, dark and feral, but somehow full of hurt and shame, too. There was something behind those arctic icebergs that begged to be thawed, I swear.

“Good. I might remember your insignificant existence in a couple years.”

I faltered. “Pass me your lighter.”

I needed to heat the needle to make sure I wasn’t going to saddle him with a bacterial infection from hell. Not that he didn’t deserve it.

He elevated his groin and fished out his Zippo, throwing it into my hands. I ran the flame along the needle, back and forth.

Vaughn stared at my face with an odd concentration that made me blush, despite my best efforts.

“The Smiths, right?” he asked.

God. What did he want from me?

I put the needle to his skin, taking a deep breath. Even though he’d bled a lot, and probably needed a bottle of water more than he did whiskey, the wound didn’t look too deep upon closer inspection. He was right. I could stitch it, but I wasn’t going to do a bang-up job. My hands were clammy and my fingers shook, but I needed to close his wound.