Page 36 of Dirty Game

It’s spattered up her wrists, dried in crusted lines along the joints of her fingers, painted in dull streaks across the pale blue of her shirt.

Her hand shakes, just ever so slightly, as she looks around the room.

She watches the bodies cooling on the floor, eyes wide, unblinking. I watch her.

“Rosalynn,” I say. Her head snaps toward me so fast I half-expect her neck to break.

She doesn’t answer, just stares. Maybe letting her back in here was a bad idea.

I crouch in front of her, take her right hand in both of mine.

Her hands are clenched tight, and I notice more damage from the fight.

There are bits of hair caught under her nails, and a stripe of scarlet curling up her other wrist.

I pry her fingers open, one by one.

It takes time, but they finally relax and open.

Her palms are a bloody mess from her nails cutting into the soft skin.

I look up and meet her eyes.

Blue, ringed with red from unshed tears.

She’s holding them back with the kind of effort that could move planets.

“Come with me,” I say. My voice is a low note, a suggestion rather than an order. “You’ve seen enough.”

She follows.

We take the back hallway, away from the carnage and into the private bathroom that nobody uses but me.

The air is cold in here, but it feels nice, calming.

I flip the tap, let the water run until it’s as hot as it’ll go.

I wet a cloth, squeeze it out, and start cleaning the blood off her hands.

She doesn’t speak, just stands there and lets me do it.

I work methodically, the way I do everything—wrist to knuckles, then fingers, then under the nails.

She winces once when I hit the cut on her forearm, but doesn’t say a word.

There’s something obscene about the intimacy of it.

Cleaning another person’s blood off someone’s skin, holding their hand steady while you do it.

I have to fight the urge to be gentle. I don’t know if she’d recognize it.

When her hands are as clean as they’re going to get, I bandage the cut with a first aid kit in the drawer. She watches me, silent.

The bathroom smells of bleach and heat and old sweat.

I want to say something, but the words stick in my throat.

I dry my own hands, then reach up to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear.