Page 51 of Trigger Happy

He leans over just enough for me to slip out from beneath him. My face flames. I can’t believe I lost my composure like that. I roll onto my back beside him as we stare up at the sunlight flickering through the emerald canopy.

I twist my head to look at him, a thank-you on the tip of my tongue, but then I see the dark red blood dripping from his forehead. “You’re bleeding.”

He swipes at it with the back of his hand. “Must’ve caught a rock on the way down, but I’ve had worse. This is nothing.”

“Hold still.” I reach up, cupping his chin before I can convince myself to stop. I don’t like seeing him bleed nearly as much as I thought.

“What are you—” He tries to jerk away, but I won’t let him.

“I said, hold still.” I brush back the messy strands sticking to his forehead and find the gash. Head wounds always bleed more, but it’s still deeper than I thought.

I point to a boulder nearby. “Sit. You need this cleaned and taped or it’ll scar.”

“I don’t mind scars. They tell a story.”

“Don’t worry. You won’t need a scar for that. I’ll make sure everyone in our circles knows that you almost got killed by Bambi.”

He laughs, a full-on, can’t-breathe, real-life chortle, but once he realizes how loud he’s being, he cuts it off like he’s shocked by the noise. I am too.

“Fair point,” he says, and actually sits on the rock.

I dig through my first aid kit, find the antiseptic, and unscrew the cap. “This’ll sting.”

He watches me. “Can’t be worse than when I got bit by a capo’s Rottweiler.”

I stand in front of him so he’s eye level with my stomach and tilt his head up. “When did that happen?”

His throat moves on a swallow. “Milan. Few years back. You weren’t there.”

I pour the antiseptic on a cotton swab. “Can I send an embossed thank-you note to his guard dog?”

“Ha-ha,” he says flatly.

I bite back a grin and gently dab the wound on his forehead. He winces.

“Painful?” I ask.

“It’s fine,” he says through gritted teeth. “This is nothing compared to the time Walker tried to swing from a wooden chandelier and brought the whole thing down on top of us. We laughed so hard we pissed ourselves.” He pauses. “Fuck, I miss that kid.”

I tense up.

Everyone thought Walker Montoya was the charming brother, but his eye contact was so potent it made you feel like you were hooked up to a lie detector, and his laugh was loud enough to make you jump, though I doubt Lawton wants to hear my true thoughts about his brother’s weird eye contact. I’m not going to be the one to ruin Lawton’s memory of his brother.

I take out a packet of butterfly tape and say, “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry for what happened.”

His eyes snap to mine, like I just said something to rearrange our future. “Why’d your mom do it?”

That familiar pinprick of unease wiggles loose. As much as I pretend to hate Lawton, I’ll never hate him enough to tell him the truth.

He watches me press the butterfly tape to his forehead, and I try my best to look unaffected by his heavy gaze. “Are they just assholes, then?” he says.

I think of all the red-velvet birthday cakes (Get it, Sabrina? It looks like blood!); the water-gun target practice at Coney Island; and how, no matter the job, my mom always tried her hardest to be back by eight p.m., seated around a dining room table like we didn’t have a family phone plan for our burners. It’s like she knew how badly I wanted a normal life.

“They’re not assholes,” I say, heat underscoring my words.

“Then why?” he says, voice hovering on the edge of a plea.

I press another piece of medical tape to the cut on his forehead, avoiding his gaze. “They never told me. All they said is that they didn’t mean for it to happen. I know you don’t want to believe me, but it really was an accident.”