Page 17 of Mischief

"You don't know. You've been chewing the inside of your cheek raw for days now." She sets a chair down and finally turns, holding my eyes long enough that I know she's seen straight through me. "You want to tell me who he actually is to you, or you would you rather keep pretending I'm blind as a bat?"

I love her for asking, and I love her more for the way she leaves the door open instead of pushing me through it.

"Not tonight," I tell her.

She nods and lets it go. If anyone gets keeping your mouth shut on something big, it's Sophie.

* * *

It's past midnight, and I'm not asleep because I haven't been able to sleep well since Bodul left.

So, I'm awake, staring at the ceiling, when the street finally gives me what I've been waiting for.

I hear the bike before I hear anything else.

Not the healthy growl of it. Something slower.

It idles in the lot too long, like the rider's sitting on it gathering himself.

I'm off the couch and at the window before the engine cuts, and my heart's already going because a man who's been riding for days doesn't sit in the parking lot unless getting off the bike is going to hurt.

I've got the door open before he knocks.

And the bottom drops out of me.

He's under the walkway light, and the light is doing him no favors.

For one horrible second, my brain refuses the picture in front of it.

His mouth is split and swollen, the lower lip fat and scabbed dark at the center.

One eye's gone purple-black and puffed to a slit.

There's road grime ground into him, days of it, and he's holding himself with one arm wrapped low across his ribs, careful, like his whole side is made of glass.

He's gray under the dirt, the type of gray a person has when they’re running on nothing but the need to get somewhere.

"Hey," he says, through the ruined mouth, and tries to smile with it, and can't.

My hands come up to him and stop an inch short because I don't know where I'm allowed to touch.

"Gods..." It comes out shaking. "Bodul. What—get in here, get inside, oh my?—"

I get an arm around him from the good side and he lets me take some of his weight, which scares me more than the face does, because Bodul doesn't lean on anyone.

He walks in bent and slow, breathing in the shallow, careful sips of a man whose ribs have quit on him.

I get him to the couch and he lowers himself down in stages, jaw clenched the whole way, a sound leaking out of him at the bottom that he tries to swallow.

I kneel in front of him, and I make myself look, really look, taking in every piece of the damage with my heart in my throat.

"Who did this?" My voice doesn't sound like mine. "Bodul. Look at me. Who did this to you?"

"Tindra." My name, wrecked.

He reaches out with a hand that's got split knuckles and cups the side of my face, and even now, even like this, his thumb finds my cheekbone like it belongs there. "I'm okay. I promise I'm?—"

"You arenotokay." I catch his wrist. "You're the opposite of okay. Your eye is swollen shut, and you're holding your ribs like they're broken, and you rode a motorcycle in this condition for days, so don't you dare tell me you're okay. Who did this?"