She wasn’t ready to find out if she still had a boob or if it was-

“Oh, fuck me,” Duncan said, sounding very un-Duncan like and taking her terror up another notch, which of course inadvertently forced her to open her eyes so that she could see the extent of the damage to her boob herself so that she could make the decision to try and save the boob or if it was for the best to just have the boob completely removed. Judging by the stinging pain down the side of her boob, she realized that the choice may no longer be hers.

Swallowing hard, and really doing her best not to lose her dinner or pass out, she forced herself to look up at Duncan and nearly lost it when she saw him openly cringe at whatever it was that he was looking at, bringing her anxiety up another notch and making her realize just how badly she didn’t want to lose her boob.

She’d never been vein, or had much of a reason to be, but she liked her boobs.

There.

She’d admitted it.

She actually cared if she lost a boob, especially because she’d stupidly lost her footing on a patch of ice all because she was too busy making sure that the man staring intently at the mangled remains of her breast, wasn’t outside where she could make another unforgettable memory to add the list of horrors that she’d put him through over the past year. Only this time she was going to lose a boob because of it.

Swallowing hard as she told herself to stop being a baby and face this thing head on, she stared at his handsome face for a few more seconds before she shifted her attention to her torn sweatshirt, the tee-shirt beneath it and the remains of her favorite gray sports bra and sighed with relief.

Her boob was still intact.

Thank God.

“I don’t think you’re going to need stitches,” Duncan said, using that same tone that he always used when he was forced to talk to her. It wasn’t rude, but then again, it wasn’t exactly friendly. It was the kind of tone that you used when you were forced to deal with someone that you couldn’t stand, and so far, she’d only ever heard him use that tone on her.

“It’s fine,” she said with a little distracted shake of her head as she pushed his hand away so that she could pull her torn shirt over her cut to cover herself as she sat up. She was relieved that it looked like she was going to be able to keep her breast, but absolutely humiliated that the man that she’d foolishly fallen in love with was seeing her like this and was clearly unimpressed with what he saw.

“No,” he said, gently brushing her hand away so that he could take another look at her mangled boob. “It doesn’t need stitches, but it definitely needs to be cleaned up and bandaged.”

She shrugged away from his grip. “I’ll take care of it,” she promised, averting her eyes away from him, too humiliate to look him in the eye and wishing that he wasn’t such a nice guy and had just left her to freeze to death so that she had a reason to hate him.

Just when she thought he was going to argue with her, and why did she want him to care so badly? he nodded with a long-suffering sigh and gestured towards the open door of her bathroom. “Wash up and I’ll bandage it for you afterwards,” he offered, not sounding particularly happy about it, which of course just made her feel really freaking special.

“I’m all set,” she said, shifting her gaze away from him as she placed her hand over the nasty cut on the side of her boob and tried not to wince, or start crying hysterically, because oh my God, did it really freaking sting.

“You either let me take care of it, or you’re going to the emergency room,” he said in a hard tone that she really just didn’t feel like arguing with.

“Fine. Whatever,” she said with a tired sigh as she headed towards her bathroom, thankful when he didn’t follow and praying that he took this opportunity to make a run for it, because it was more than obvious that he’d rather be anywhere but here.

*-*-*-*

God, what he wouldn’t give to leave, he thought wistfully as he stared at her closed bedroom door, telling himself that he could leave, but he couldn’t. Not only was she his neighbor, not by choice of course, but from what Jodi had told him, she’d taken an order for their family at the last minute and had most likely spent her entire day baking for them. Since it was obvious that she’d injured herself while delivering that order, it would make him look like a complete asshole if he left now before he made sure that she was really okay.

It was times like this that he wished that he could be a complete asshole like his brother Lucifer, but apparently there was a one-asshole quota for every family and Lucifer happily filled that position. Looking around the small room with cookbooks and magazines stacked on every possible surface and corner, he decided to sit down and wait on the on the edge of the bed since it was the only piece of furniture not covered with cookbooks. Praying that she moved her ass, he found himself leaning back until he was resting against the large pile of pillows that she was hoarding, closed his eyes against the sharp light piercing his brain and making him rethink those pain meds that his father had offered him.

He hated pills, hated being sick, but most of all, he hated being here.

*-*-*-*

Once she’d managed to wash away the blood, pick out the small pieces of gravel stuck in the small cuts marring the side of her breast, it really wasn’t that bad.

At least, that’s what she told herself as she stood there, wincing as she slowly applied bacitracin to the long cut simply because she refused to give Duncan another peep show that would end with her self-esteem taking another hit. Ignoring the way that her ripped skin stung from the light pressure, she finished applying the first aid ointment and moved onto the oversized bandages. It took her five minutes, four “ouchies,” and eight bandages, but she finally managed to cover the damage done to her boob to her satisfaction and pull an oversized “Dixon Bakery” tee shirt on along with a pair a sweatpants.

Once she was dressed, she decided to run a comb through her hair again, pull her damp hair into a ponytail, brush her teeth and then reorganize her medicine cabinet. When that was done she moved on to staring at the closed bathroom door, wondering if she was going to have to deal with Duncan Bradford or if she was finally going to get a break and find her bedroom empty so that she could go to bed and get a few hours of sleep before she was forced to get up at four in the morning and head off to the bakery to start her day.