Redemption

Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Darius walked up the stairs of his apartment. He rarely took the elevator, but he really should have just this once. The cut on his arm bled into his hand as he tried to apply pressure to stop the flow. Viceroy had met him just outside the building, so he knew that someone would help him if he lost too much blood and passed out. He knew he was simply thinking the worst with that last thought – even though blood kept coming out, it really wasn’t that severe of a wound.

                Finally, he made it to his door and knew the worst thing he had to deal with was cleaning the blood he surely dripped in the stairway. He entered the door code on the pad next to his door and a green light flashed quickly, letting him know it was unlocked. He held the door open for Viceroy and followed the snow leopard inside before closing the door and making his way to the couch. His oddly clean couch.

                Ever since Wynter moved in to one of the empty apartments the floor below about a month before, they’d spent quite a bit of time together. Once she’d gone inside his apartment a handful of times, she took on the mission of straightening it up. At first, Darius didn’t like it, since he didn’t want a maid, but Wynter insisted on it since he wasn’t charging her rent. And now that his place was clean, he really couldn’t complain.

                “Hey, Darius,” Wynter called from his bedroom. “Just putting some… oh my god!” She came into the living room and saw him clutching his still bleeding arm. “What happened? Are you okay?”

                “It’s fine,” Darius said, lifting his hand off the wound for a moment to see if the bleeding had slowed. “Just a cut. It’ll stop bleeding in a bit.”

                “Are you sure? That looks like a lot of blood for just a cut.” She sat down next to him, placing her hand over his to help apply more pressure. “How long ago did that happen?”

                “It’s really not that bad,” he insisted. “It reopened on my way up.” It wasn’t entirely a lie – the cut had stopped bleeding for a while but when he got out of his car, it started bleeding again.

                “You got a first aid kit,” Wynter said, getting up quickly and running back into his bedroom.

                “I do?” Darius asked, even though Wynter couldn’t hear him. It didn’t surprise him that he had a first aid kit, but he didn’t remember getting it.

                “Take your shirt off,” Wynter ordered once she returned with the kit and several towels. She draped one of the towels on the couch next to Darius on the side of the cut. Once his shirt was off she put his arm up on the couch and then pressed another towel onto the wound. “What happened?”

                “I thought you were an art student, not a doctor,” Darius said, avoiding the question.

                “My dad’s a nurse, and this is hardly the work of a doctor. So how’d you get cut?”

                Darius sighed, realizing he wasn’t going to get out of answering the question without being a total asshole, and he liked Wynter. He didn’t need to push away one of the few people that liked him. “I had a little, uh, talk with your ex. It didn’t really go that well.”

                “Trent did this?” Wynter gasped. “Oh my god, Darius, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want you to get involved in this!”

                “Don’t worry about it. It’s no big deal.”

                “Darius! He tried to kill you! How is that not a big deal?”