and the salt in my wounds isn’t burning anymore than it used to
it’s not that i don’t feel the pain, it’s just i’m not afraid of hurting anymore.

She clipped the dressing with some scissors and anchored it against his wrist with a bandage clip.

“This one will take a few days to heal.” At times she wasn’t sure if she was telling him the truth, or if it was her subconscious trying to keep him around just a little longer.

He wrapped his hand over it to make sure it was secure and grinned at her, “Harry Potter Movie Marathon?”

She rolled her eyes, pouring more antiseptic solution on to a cotton pad and getting to work on the cuts across his forearm. “Don’t worry about them, they’re only small, they’ll heal on their own.”

“Every wound’s important, small cuts get infected just as easy as big cuts,” She murmured, concentrating on removing the small pieces of gravel from his scratches. 

The door bell rang and she looked up, “Here, just keep wiping those,” She handed him the cotton pad and climbed up from her knees using the lounge as leverage. 

Sam leaned back on the couch to take a peek down the hallway at the front door – there stood a young guy in jeans and a leather jacket holding flowers in his left hand; Sam turned away when a glint of sunlight hit the wedding ring on the intruder’s finger, and reminded him he was being openly intrusive.

Returning to his wounds, he pretended he’d been doing so all along when she walked back in to the room. “Any one important?” He feigned nonchalance. 

She leaned over him, checking for more scrapes, finding too many forgotten bruises still healing, “An old friend.” He tried not to flinch when her fingertips grazed an open cut. 

“An old boyfriend?” He raised an eyebrow, looking to gauge her reaction.

She sighed, “Kind of.” Pushing his hair back from his forehead she hung it behind his ear. She was so close all he could smell was her – vanilla and cinnamon sugar.

“He’s married…?” It came out and fell in the space between a statement and a question, where there is an infinite gap separating what’s wrong and right. 

She finished dressing the lesion and stood, looking down at him slightly defensive, “Maybe I’m just a sucker for boys that never stay.”

Sam placed his palms over his knees and with a slight rock forward for momentum managed to propel himself upright; she stifled a small breath in as he towered over her, “I’m not a boy.”

He said it with such conviction, like that was the most important part of what was wrong with her statement. She caught herself before her head shook in disbelief.

Their eyes held for a moment before she moved aside, cleaning up and packing away the First Aid Kit. She was placing the gauze in to a snap lock bag when she glanced up at him quickly with a flick of her eyelids, indulging him in a smile, “And excuse me, but, when exactly did we start talking about you?”

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