SORROW WOODS (6 page)

She sounds so vulnerable and scared that it makes something feel like it’s sticking in my

chest. This is all my fault. “It’s okay. You might faint, but you’ll wake up again.”

“Faint?”

Before I can reassure her, I watch her eyes roll back in her head and then her body goes

limp. I ruffle my hands through my hair and swear under my breath. This can’t be happening. She’s injured and has probably alerted half the animals in the woods that we’re here with the smell of her blood. I scoop her up into my arms and begin the walk back to her shack.

After a few minutes, I feel her head stirring in my arms and her big eyes flash open. I watch

her face crumple in confusion and then pain. “Hey,” I say, hoping she doesn’t try to wiggle out of my arms.

“Kaiden?”

I nod. “You fell and hurt your ankle,” I whisper, “and then you fainted, so I’m taking you back

to your shack.”

“House.”

I look down at her. “What?”

“It’s not a shack,” she breathes, “it’s our home.”

“Sorry.”

She sighs deeply into my chest, forcing the heat of her breath through my coat and onto my

skin.

Serena

Kaiden strides right up the steps and pushes the door wide open with his foot. I’m so glad to be here in the safety and warmth of my own home that my eyes start to fill with tears.

“What’s the matter now?” he asks, blinking at me.

He’s carried me all the way home with an injured shoulder. I heard the noise it made when the

wolf stood on him, so I know it must be hurting him right now.

“You were gonna take me.” It’s not a question and I don’t expect him to answer me. I don’t

understand the way he thinks or what his reasons for doing things are. He intrigues me as much as he repulses me.

Kaiden lowers me down onto the battered, brown sofa and winces as he shifts his arms from

underneath me.

“Is your shoulder hurting?” I ask, curious if he’ll admit it.

He stands up straight, nods once and then looks around the room.

“I can fix it,” I tell him.

“How?”

I glance towards the bookcase. “I’ve read books on medicine and injuries and stuff.”

He frowns. “You think you can fix my shoulder because you read a book?”

I nod. “Do you have any better ideas?”

He sighs. “I don’t know. I need to go home.”

I nod. “Fine.”

He sighs. “I’m sorry about tonight, Serena. I shouldn’t have come here and asked you to

come to the woods with me. That was wrong of me.”

“Yes, it was wrong.”

“I was never going to hurt you though. I’m sorry I scared you.”

“So what were you gonna do?”

He shakes his head. “It doesn’t matter now. I realise I was wrong and won’t try to do it

again.”

I think about Elodie then and even though I don’t know exactly how long I’ve been gone, I

start to worry that she’s woken and has gone out to look for me. “Elodie,” I breathe. “I need to check that she’s alright. I’ve been gone ages!”

He looks up and nods behind me. “Is she behind that curtain?”

I nod. I suddenly feel sick, thinking about how I would feel if he looked behind those curtains

and told me that Elodie wasn’t there. I hold my breath and watch him step across the room. He

slowly pulls the blue curtain back and nods. “She’s in there. Sleeping.”

I breathe out, feeling the relief wash through me. “Good.”

“So your Mother is in the city getting supplies?”

I nod.

“And she’ll definitely be gone for three weeks?”

I nod again.

He scratches the back of his head with the hand of his good arm. “Is she always gone for

three weeks?”

“Yes. Always.”

It goes quiet between us after that. I don’t know what to think of him as I watch his eyes trail

around our tiny house. I realise that if he hadn’t come back for me and carried me home, then I

might have been stuck in those woods all night. I could have been eaten by another wolf.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

He stares at me long and hard. He has lovely, deep brown eyes. When I first saw them in the

woods the other day, I thought they reminded me of chocolate, but looking at them now, I realise

they’re a much richer, deeper colour than chocolate.

“What are you thanking me for? I nearly got us both killed.”

“You carried me back home,” I say simply.

He nods. “Least I could do, I guess.”

The fire is still dwindling in the corner and I can feel the temperature of the room start to

dip.

“Do you think you could build the fire back up for me before you go please?” I hate that I have

to ask him, but my ankle hurts too much to even think about trying to do it myself and I don’t want Elodie to freeze during the night.

He glances at the logs and the fire in the corner and nods.

I sit up and watch him stack more logs on with one arm. He keeps his left arm curled into his

stomach and doesn’t move it.

“I can fix that,” I say again, nodding towards his shoulder when he walks back to me.

“What do you think is wrong with it?”

“It’s just popped out. I can push it back in.”

“It hasn’t just
popped
out. It hurts like hell.” He frowns and lets out a huge sigh. “What book is it that you’ve read that you think will help you put my shoulder back into its socket anyway?”

I shrug, wondering why he seems to be offended by the way I assessed his injury. “Accident

and Emergency for Beginners.”

His lips twitch but remain in a hard, straight line. “Fine, do what you want.”

“Can you go and get me the book from the bookshelf?” I ask.

He raises his eyes at me and smiles. “Are you going to say please?”

I stare at him. “Just get it.”

He grunts and glances behind me to where the bookcase is. “Which shelf?”

“Bottom. All of our encyclopaedias are on the bottom shelf.”

I watch him roll his eyes at me before walking behind the sofa and squatting down in front of

the bookcase. He pulls the book out and walks back around to me with a strange expression on his

face.

“Thanks,” I say, taking it roughly from his hands. I can’t work out how I feel about him.

There’s a strange part of me that wants him to stay so I can ask him all about his life, what the world is like where he lives, and what the girls are like. But there’s another part of me that hates him so much that a horrible, sticky feeling in my throat starts to itch and crawl up and into my mouth when I look at him.

I keep thinking about the poor wolf that I had to kill. He’s so stupid going out there in the

middle of the night. How could he not even consider the fact that there might be animals out there in the dark that would be hunting? I just hope that I didn’t kill a poor cub’s Mother. I’m sure that those sad, orange eyes will haunt my dreams for the next few weeks. I turn myself around on the

sofa and spread my legs whilst trying not to bang my ankle against anything.

“Sit down on the floor in between my legs,” I tell him.

“Are you being serious?”

Why would I say something if I didn’t mean it?

“Yes, I can’t stand because of my foot and it will be easier if you’re below me so I can get some leverage.” I watch his face to see if he frowns at me or rolls his eyes again but he doesn’t. He simply shuffles onto the floor and backs into the gap between my knees, resting the bottom of his spine

against the sofa.

“You need to take your clothes off,” I say, receiving a funny look from him.

“Fine,” he responds slowly, “but I’ll need you to help me with my jacket.”

I lean forward and peel his jacket down past his shoulders, pulling it off his right arm quickly.

I gather the rest of the fabric and slowly ease it down his left arm. He starts to roll his t-shirt up but moans in pain, so I bend down and carefully pull it over each of his arms and head.

I can’t help but stare at his bare, muscular back that is splattered with dark brown freckles. I

feel like getting a pen and connecting them to see what picture they make. I’m glad he’s facing away from me so he can’t see my face. I’ve never seen a boy’s body before. It’s so different from mine and my Mother’s that I can’t help but look at the ripples of muscle.

“What are you doing?” he asks, trying to turn his head around to look at me.

I quickly move my eyes from the bottom of his back where it disappears into his jeans.

“I’m assessing what sort of dislocation I think it is.” I open the book and find the page I need. I run my fingers gently over his left shoulder and feel the joint sticking out from the top part of the front of his chest.

“It’s anterior,” I tell him.

“And what does that mean?”

“It means it’s the most common sort of dislocation and I can try and manually pop it back in.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” he says, apprehension clear in his voice.

“It’s either that or I leave it and you have to try and drive yourself back to wherever it is that you came from with it sticking out like that.”

“Is it going to hurt? The relocating it, I mean.”

I shrug. I have no idea, but I imagine it will hurt just as much as when it came out. “Yes, I think so.”

He looks towards the kitchen cupboards. “Do you have any alcohol?”

I laugh, making him jump underneath me. “We don’t have anything like that here.”

“Great,” he sighs, “well, I might need something to bite on.”

I look around but don’t see anything that I would like to be in his mouth. “Why don’t you just

bite down on your t-shirt if you think it’s gonna be that bad?”

He sighs and leans forward, snatching his t-shirt from off the floor. “Just hurry up.”

“It’ll take as long as it takes. Just be quiet and let me do what I gotta do,” I say sternly.

“Are you always this bossy, Serena?”

I’m startled when I hear him say my name. He said it when we were in the woods and when

he was at the front door, but it sounded smoother and deeper when he said it just now. It’s the first time that I’ve ever heard my name spoken like that before. It makes me shudder. I take a deep

breath and remember that he actually asked me a question.

“Only when I’m dealing with idiots and stupid, dumbass people.”

He chuckles which makes his shoulders shake. The vibrations and movement must hurt him

because he sucks in a quick, sharp breath. “And how many idiots and stupid, dumbass people have

you had to deal with before?”

“You’re the first.”

He grunts. “I hope I don’t disappoint you then.”

“Well, you haven’t so far.” I lean down and brush my hand down his arm until I get to his

elbow. I pull his forearm up and push it across the front of his chest like my books tells me to until it’s in a proper ‘L’ shape.

“Ouch, that hurts,” he hisses.

I stare at his crumpled up face. “I told you it would. Now make a fist.”

He does as he’s told and shoves the t-shirt into his mouth with his other hand. “I’m gonna

slowly rotate your shoulder using your lower arm, but you need to keep the upper arm stationary.”

He nods silently so I begin. I wrap my fingers around his fisted wrist and gently sway his arm.

He groans into the fabric that’s stuffed into his mouth. I take a deep breath and gently press the fingertips of my other hand into the protruding shoulder joint as I rock his arm. I hear him gasp and feel him fighting against me, but I hold tight and carry on. The book tells me to not give in to the patient’s pain, not stopping until I feel it pop back in. I continue to push on his shoulder and gently sway his arm from side-to-side. On the fourth time, I hear a clear, loud popping noise and the t-shirt drops from his mouth instantly.

“Is that it?” he asks, sounding surprised.

I glance back at my book which tells me that once I hear it pop into place, the patient should

feel immediate relief. “I think so. Does it feel better?”

He nods. “Yeah, loads better actually.”

“Don’t move it,” I advise him. “The book says you should keep it in the ‘L’ shape and that you

should wear a sling.”

“Do you have a sling?” he asks.

I shake my head. “I could make one from your t-shirt maybe?”

He hands it to me. “Go ahead.”

I lean forward but can’t stop my hair from dropping down the side of my face and hanging

over his shoulder. He slowly turns around until his eyes fix on mine. Our faces are so close that I can feel his breath washing over my face. I stare at him and he stares at me. I don’t smile or frown, or make any faces at him whatsoever. I simply stare into his eyes to try and figure out what’s going on in his head. I never realised that people were so complicated. Elodie and I simply say what we’re thinking when we’re thinking it. Kaiden appears to keep everything that he’s thinking locked up

inside his own head.

“I can’t believe you did that,” he whispers.

I watch his eyes roam all over my face. I watch them move up into my hair before trailing

down my nose until they seem to lock onto my lips. I wonder if I have something on them and rub

my tongue along them to check.

“Thanks,” he says, sounding breathless. Maybe it really did hurt him when I fixed his

shoulder.

I nod and feel slightly embarrassed that I’ve been staring at him for so long. “You’re

welcome.”

I take a deep breath and tear his t-shirt down the seam until I have a long piece of fabric

stringing down from my hands. I hook it under his forearm and elbow, tying a small knot in it at the back of his neck. “You need to rest it.”

“Okay,” he answers.

I glance at the clock and realise its well into the morning. I hadn’t realised it was so late, or early, depending on how you look at it. Kaiden must notice me looking because he shuffles back

against the sofa and sighs.

“I think it’s too late for me to walk back to my truck now.”