Page 3 of The Games We Play

“We’ll get you the help you need,” I promise.

There’s flurry of furious activity when we arrive. King’s pissed. I hear someone say that Switch, our medic, isn’t here and were going to have to wait for him.

Fuck.

“Come on, little chick,” I say as I carry Iris inside and lay her down on the pool table. The sharp hiss as she straightens her leg breaks my heart.

Gwen hurries over. “Get me a first aid kit. Whatever supplies you’ve got.”

“I need help,” Iris pleads as I place my fist down firmly by the side of her head.

If there’d be no implications, I’d take her to the hospital myself. But I can’t. “Too many questions to go to the ER. But I promise. Switch is a good medic and he’s on his way, and that’s Gwen, our president’s sister. I won’t let anything happen to you while you’re here. I promise.”

“I’m just going to take a look,” Gwen says, lifting the hem of Iris’s coat, but the look on her face tells me the wound is out of her league.

“Spark. Go get me a clean wad of cloth. A towel, dishcloth, T-shirt, anything?”

I glare at Gwen. I don’t want to leave Iris alone. I hate the idea of her on our pool table that I know countless women have been fucked on. But I go do it anyway.

I run to my room and grab a clean T-shirt and a thin sheet from my dresser. While rummaging, I place a quick call to Switch to get a timing estimate.

I don’t like his answer.

When I return, I shove the T-shirt to Gwen. “Clean. I just washed it. Hadn’t even put it away yet.” I reach for Iris’s hand.

“Hold this,” Gwen says as she applies the T-shirt to the wound. “Pressure. Lots of it. Until she can get it cleaned and stitched.”

She walks away to grab something, and I do as she says, swallowing down the trippy shadow of fear I feel. I’ve been here before, applying pressure to wounds of people I care about.

“You holding in there, Iris?” I ask.

Tears spill over her lashes, her face blotchy from panic and pain. I wonder what her cheeks look like when she comes. When tears spill over for other reasons.

“No. Not really,” she says quietly.

Her answer kills my thoughts. “I’m sorry I brought trouble to your door. I didn’t keep you safe.”

“No. You didn’t.” Her anguish slices through me as surely as a knife. “Trouble always follows men like you.”

“You doing okay, Iris?” Gwen asks as she returns.

“You don’t happen to have an IV of powerful meds do you?”

Her question makes the sides of my mouth twitch. There’s humor in her delivery, even as her breath catches.

“Unfortunately not.” Gwen digs into a first aid kit. “I can do you a nice line of over-the-counter pain relief or whiskey.”

“I’m just going to bleed out here, am I?” Iris asks, looking up at me. Her eyes are so green, so pretty, with long eyelashes. There’s a small bank of freckles across her pert nose. And her lips ...

I force myself to answer. “Switch, our doc, was an army medic. He was out on a run, but I called him in and he’s on his way back. You’re safe here, Iris.”

“I need to call my godfather, my uncle, so he can come get me. I would but I don’t have my phone.”

King pulls out his phone and Iris gives him the number. He stands away from the crowd for the call but then I see him mouth the wordfuckas he tugs at his hair.

“He’s on his way,” King says. “Spark, get your ass away from her.”

“Fuck off, Prez,” I reply, but there’s no malice in my tone. “She’s been hurt, I’m not leaving until—”