The Goth and His Psycho.

The Goth and His Psycho: [Chapter Eleven]

  Alex eased Bree down onto the bed slowly, his bed. His actual bed. And she was lying on it. 

  “What are you staring at?” she demanded. 

  “Nothing” he quickly mumbled. He did a clean sweep of his room, throwing underwear and dirty clothes into his washing basket and picking up all the junk from his floor, to make certain she didn’t fall and hurt herself on her bad leg. 

  “Uh, do you want anything?” he asked her as he straightened finally, only to realise she was now sitting against his headboard, watching him with those vivid green eyes, he flushed. 

  “You look nice when you blush” she told him, he expected her to smile, but she didn’t, it was a statement, not really a compliment. “Like what?” she asked then, raising an eyebrow. 

  “Like, food, drink, shower, whatever” he shrugged. She bit her lip, and Alex felt his stomach knot uncomfortably. 

  “I’d love a shower” she mumbled. He smiled but didn’t wait for her to smile back, he knew better. So instead he went into his own bathroom and turned on the water, switching it to warm instead of boiling, he didn’t want it hurting her wounds. 

  When he got back into his room, he found her sitting against the edge of her bed, staring around. He moved to her side, holding out his hands as he did. 

  “You have a great house, I forgot what it looked like” she shook her head as she placed her small hands in his larger ones. Pulling her up, he wrapped a steady arm around her waist while he tried not to wince at her comment. He didn’t want to think about how she’d been absent from his life for four years. 

  He helped her into the bathroom, and he was glad he had cleared his floor, because not only was she injured, she was just plain clumsy, some things didn’t change, he guessed. 

  “Uh, I’ll leave you” he mumbled when he’d helped her into the tiled room, already cosy with the damp mist hanging in the air. He turned to leave, but stopped dead when her hand caught his elbow. 

  “Can you stay?” she asked, she didn’t look away from him as she said the words, but Alex could feel himself blushing furiously. Still, he nodded. 

  She pulled the borrowed hoodie from her back and handed it to him silently, he dropped it to the floor as she ran her hands over her forearms, a frown on her face, he wondered if she could feel those scars. Because they were vivid against her skin, slashes that were wide and raised on her tender flesh. He wanted to touch them, but thought that probably wasn’t a good idea. She’d either made those herself or her family had done it, but then some of them were still purple, only newly healed then… could it have been someone at Crickly? 

  He thought better than to ask, and kept a steady gaze on the floor as he heard the rustle of clothing, and then she held the shirt out for him, he took it, dropping that to the pile too, but still, he couldn’t help glancing up at her. 

  She wasn’t wearing a bra, which surprised him so much he jerked his head away. But when she chuckled, he looked back with a frown. 

  “It’s just skin, Pansy” she rolled her eyes at him. He supposed that was a good way of looking at it, she didn’t bother to cover herself up, and he didn’t bother to hide the fact that his gaze swept over her exposed flesh. Her stomach was toned, and flat. Littered with scars, these were worse than her arms, these weren’t caused by her. They were long slashes, long and violent and all around horrific. And then there were smaller ones too, little round ones. Alex bet his life they were from cigarette burns and he felt his fists tighten in response.