The Vanishing Season (The Collector #4)(53)

I turn off the burner and lunge for the sink to spin on the tap. “Don’t move,” I snap. “Your feet are bare.”

Of course he doesn’t listen, but he at least steps over the puddles carefully, coming up behind me as I wait for the water to get to warm. Cold water might feel better, but it’ll also blister the skin. Warm water eases the burn more gently. I stick my arm under the faucet as soon as the temp is in the right range, not bothering to pull back my sleeve. If the skin is already blistering, the fabric could stick to it, and that’s just not pleasant to deal with.

“Eliza . . .”

I turn to look at him, and his face looks chalky, like all the blood just drained out of him. “It was an accident,” I tell him softly. “Bran, look at me.”

He does. Sort of.

“Not my arm, at me.”

He swallows hard and slowly lifts his gaze.

“Brandon Leonidas Eddison, I swear on everything holy, if I ever have reason to think you’ve hurt me on purpose, I will put a bullet through your knee. At least your knee. In all your rage, you were hitting cabinets. Your fist never came at me. You never threatened me. You didn’t see the handle; this was an accident. Tell me you recognize that.”

“I . . .” He closes his mouth without finishing the thought, looking sick.

Unbuttoning my blouse, I shrug out of the left sleeve. His hands shake as he helps me carefully slide it down my right arm without moving away from the water. The splash marks are already an angry, deep red-violet, and despite the speed in getting it under the tap, it will probably blister. Burns being the rogues they are, there’s no way to guess whether or not it will scar.

“We need . . .” His throat muscles work convulsively as he tries to swallow again. “We need to get you to a clinic.”

“It’ll be okay. I’ve got burn cream at home.”

“You do?”

“Bran, do you have any idea how many times I’ve burned myself with water? About one in ten times I cook pasta or rice. Or any kind of liquid that can spit unexpectedly.”

“But it’s never looked like this,” he whispers.

I glance down at my thin tank top, then yank up the hem. It’s a little awkward one-handed, especially with him staring at me rather than trying to help, but eventually I get the bottom half folded over my chest. There’s a pale pink, hammer-shaped discoloration about an inch below my left underwire. “Remember Mjolnir? It’s not a birthmark; it’s a burn scar. I got it in college because I was stupid enough to bend completely over a pot of water on the camp stove we weren’t supposed to have in our dorm room. It was so bad that Shira named it. I got it twelve years ago, and it’s shrunk a little, but it still looks like this.”

“Eliza, please . . . please, don’t . . .” He tugs my shirt back into place, but gingerly, like he’s suddenly afraid to touch me.

“Bran, I mean it. If I ever think it’s on purpose, I’ll have my gun in hand before you finish the follow-through. I will not let myself be abused again.”

His eyes flicker briefly to my mouth, but he still won’t look at me properly.

“If you ever hit me, I will never downplay it. I will face it, own it, and explain that to everyone who wants to know why I just shot you in the dick.”

Another flicker, this time accompanied by a pained almost-smile.

“This was an accident.”

“An accident,” he finally agrees, faintly. He stares at the blisters already starting to puff up on my forearm. “We should really get you to a clinic.”

“They cannot do anything for me that my first aid kit won’t let me do myself. I have burn cream. I have gauze. I have bandages.”

“I can’t . . . I can’t . . .”

I lean back against his chest, forcing him to either put an arm around me or fall. “Breathe,” I instruct softly.

“I can’t—”

“Yes, you can. Just breathe.”

He tries, he does—I can feel him struggling to try—but then he jerks away. “I’m getting Mercedes. Just . . . just hang on.” And then he’s running out of the kitchen before I can do more than say his name.





18

It’s not Mercedes who comes jogging into the kitchen a few minutes later, but Cass. She freezes in the doorway and stares at the destruction in the kitchen.

“Careful where you step,” I tell her. “There’s water on the floor.”

“Eliza, what the hell happened? Are you all right?”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“He came running in, seemed like he was about to say something, and then raced for the toilet and started horking up his toenails. Mercedes is with him.”

I close my eyes. Now that we’re not snapping at each other—now that the slams of the cabinet doors aren’t stoking the adrenaline—I can feel my hands start to shake, a mirror tremble in my lungs. “It really was an accident.”

“Okay.”

“He went to slam his hand on the counter, but he was too close to the stove. He hit the handle of the pot instead. I might not even have been splashed if I hadn’t shoved him out of the way. It really was an accident.”

“Okay.” She steps carefully around the fallen doors and the puddles of still-steaming water, eyeing the cabinet that has very noticeably had a fist punched through it. She stretches up on her toes to get a look at my arm. “Doesn’t look like it’s going to fall off.”