“I want you to stop calling me angel,” she said. “Move.”
“Move where? There’s not a whole lot of room in this trailer. Couldn’t you have chosen something a little more spacious? Some nice cushy RV instead of this vintage tin can?”
“Annabelle is a treasure,” she said, moving past him and perching herself on the seat of the dinette. The medical supplies were spread out on the table, some of which she’d never seen before, and the Formica was littered with blood-soaked paper towels. His shirt lay on the other side of the dinette, and it was soaked with blood as well. “You’re making a hash of that. Come here.”
He stared at her in disbelief. “Don’t tell me you’re offering to stitch me up?”
“I’m not offering, I’m ordering. You’re doing a terrible job of it.”
“And just how many people have you stitched up?”
She shrugged. “No one. I can’t do a worse job than you’re doing, and any squeamishness I might have will be wiped out by the pure joy I’ll get from stabbing needles into you.” She found a pair of gloves and began pulling them on. “Not that I don’t trust you,” she added in a limpid tone, “but I don’t intend to expose myself to your doubtlessly tainted blood.”
He looked at her for a long moment, then moved closer, right up against her, handing her the needle. She hadn’t taken that part into account, that she would have to be so close to him, touching him. She looked at the torn flesh in front of her and considered throwing up.
“If you’re going to do it, then stop farting around. I don’t want you puking all over me. It helps if you look at it as something other than human flesh. Think of it as repairing a rip in a tarp.” His hostility was aimed directly at her, and she tried to think of some terrible thing she might have done. He was the bad guy here, not her. He had a lot of nerve dumping all that anger on her.
He was also wounded and probably in a lot of pain, even though he didn’t show it. She could give him just a little bit of slack. She swallowed, then stabbed the needle through his skin. He didn’t even blink as she pulled it through.
“So tell me,” he said. “Why do you call your camper Annabelle?”
She frowned, concentrating. He was trying to distract her, and probably himself as well, and she was willing to let him. “It seemed like a good name for her. She’s a little old-fashioned, very sturdy, nicely retro. I like to personalize inanimate objects—it makes life pleasant. My GPS is Grace, my truck is Dolores.” She bent her head. She could smell the coppery scent of his blood, could smell the familiar scent of his skin.
“That way you can be surrounded by machines you’ve turned into people and not have to deal with anyone at all. Is that particularly healthy?”
She jabbed the needle with a little more force, but he still didn’t react. “I find that inanimate objects are more trustworthy. They break down, but you can always fix them, and if they really screw up, you simply replace them. Much easier than putting up with humans.” She grabbed a paper towel and wiped more blood away, then took another stitch. “I’ve learned people are dispensable, and I’m mostly better off without them.”
“Including your family?”
“Most especially my family. My parents couldn’t care less, my sister dislikes me and seems to want everything I have. Maybe I should send you to her.”
“You think you still have me?”
She ducked her head, feeling heat flood her face. “Oh, she likes anything I ever had. I think you two deserve each other.”
He said nothing for a moment. “So if you don’t like your parents, why did you become a college professor just like them?”
That made her jerk her head up, and she was much too close to him. She was breathing him in, and it was like a drug, like hashish fumes clouding her senses. “How do you know about my parents? Why would you remember something like that?”
“I know everything about you,” he said.
She tied off the knot, then surveyed her handiwork. Very neat, and the bleeding had stopped. “I sincerely doubt that,” she said, making her voice cold, even as her body warmed. She set the needle down on the table and looked for bandages.
He had gauze pads and strips of surgical tape already prepared. “I can handle this part.”
“Shut up and let me finish.” She covered the long gash with antiseptic ointment, smearing it on lightly. “I assume you cleaned this properly before you started sewing?”
“Rinsed it with your bottle of rum.”
Her eyes shot up. That had to have hurt like hell, and he hadn’t made a sound. “Just as long as you didn’t touch my Scotch,” she said, applying the bandage, smoothing it carefully over his torn flesh.
“I’m not a complete savage. That’s an unopened bottle of a very fine single malt you have. My brand, in fact. You never used to like Scotch—I had to drink it alone. What made you change?”
She shrugged, and her shoulder protested at the unexpected movement. “Maybe I developed a taste for quick oblivion.”
“Now that is a terrible waste of Scotch.” He was watching her. She could feel the heat coming off his body, seeming to surround her, and she needed to get away from him. She applied the second strip of tape with a little too much force, but he didn’t even blink.
“Since it’s my Scotch, I don’t worry about it.” She pulled back, then looked up at him. She couldn’t move—he was blocking her, keeping her trapped on the dinette seat, and there was something menacing about him, a menace she hadn’t felt before. It was sex and anger, and her nerves tightened. She had to wait until he moved away, and he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to do so. “And you didn’t know I started drinking Scotch five years ago. Clearly you don’t know as much as you think you do.”