“You’re telling me, my ass hat brother gave me a second-degree burn on my tits?”
“Well, not exactly on your tits, per se. More across that area of your chest. You were lucky it didn’t burn your breasts, though, because a burn like that on the skin—”
I stopped when she sat up straight, her glare focused on the curtain. “Do you know what he was doing when I dropped the cup?”
I figured this was a rhetorical question, so I didn’t say anything.
“He had his face pressed against the glass and was doing a blowfish on it while he pressed that fucking doorbell. Can you believe that? I heard a train roaring through my house and then saw him trying to eat my damn window.”
Again, it was rhetorical. But just in case an answer was needed: Yes, I could believe that. Archer was probably the most normal one out of this side of the family, but he still had Townsend blood running through his veins.
“How illegal is murder?” she suddenly asked, her voice probably coming out louder than she’d intended for it to. “I mean, in these circumstances, when you’ve got a second-degree burn on your ta-ta’s because your brother’s a dickhead—how illegal would it be?”
“Fucking illegal,” a deep voice I recognized as belonging to Connor—one of the deputy sheriffs in our county— replied from the cubicle next to us.
Not to be deterred by the voice of authority—literally—she shot back, “But given the circumstances—”
“It’s still fucking illegal.”
While she tried to plead her case with him, I went about getting what I wanted to put on the area to stop any further blistering. When I had what I needed, I went back to where the discussion was still ongoing.
“What if I blamed it on rabid PMS?”
“Hey, Parker, is she decent?” he asked me, hearing me chuckling at her question.
Skimming my eyes up to her semi-naked torso, stopping briefly on the swell of her breasts above the pretty bra she was wearing, I moved over to where the curtain separating the cubicles ended and stuck my head around the corner of it so I could see him. I didn’t expect to find him with a bloody bandage on his shin.
“No, she isn’t. And looking at you, you shouldn’t be moving either.”
“Lucky bastard,” he whispered. “Okay, when she’s decent, can y’all open the curtain so I can talk to her. I feel like I’m at a confessional with a psycho with it closed.”
Shaking my head, I went back to treating Ari, whose lips were twitching at his description. At least she’d stopped trying to justify murdering her brother.
“I’m going to put some of this on it,” I told her, holding up the tube. “Then I’m going to put this dressing on it. Burn treatment isn’t a standard thing, it depends on the doctor and the burn itself. You’ve got a first degree burn around here,” I pointed at the surrounding area. “It’s the second degree one that I’m more concerned about. You need to keep the area clean, baby, and tomorrow I’ll change the dressing to one that’s basically a gauze with what looks like Vaseline all over it, and we’ll put a normal dressing over the top of it. Once the blisters are healing, we’ll reassess what we’re doing. Does that sound okay?”
Shrugging the shoulder on her uninjured side, she looked at the stuff I’d brought in. “I’m not the doctor here. If you think it’s best, then go for it.”
Putting on clean gloves, I punctured the tube and squeezed it out onto her red skin, wincing when she made a noise.
“Sorry, baby. I’m going to smear it out now. Tell me if I’m hurting you.”
“This sounds filthy,” Connor snickered, distracting Ariana from what I was doing.
“So, what if Archer just disappeared? Like, one day he’s here, the next he isn’t, and we can’t find him, and there’s no evidence of foul play. Does that count?” she asked him, making me roll my eyes.
“Considering you’ve just tried justifying his murder to me, I’d say you’d been in deep shit,” he rumbled back.
“Well, I can’t help it if he goes missing!”
“You’ve just asked me if it counts if he disappears after discussing how to justify killing him, Ariana. Can you not see how that would implicate you hugely in why he disappeared?”
Chewing on her lower lip, she thought about what he’d just said.
A bark of laughter met her silence. “Jesus Christ, she’s thinking it over, isn’t she?”
I was in the process of opening her dressing and had to put a hand on her stomach to stop her from getting off the bed. “Yeah, she is. She also looks like she’s going to try to kick your ass.”
This time, her glare was aimed at me.
Giving her an innocent smile, I laid the dressing across the area and then picked up the bandage that I’d have to wrap around her chest to keep it in place. I was about to wrap it around her but realized her bra would get in the way. Reaching over for her t-shirt, I passed it to her and gestured at her bra.