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I get up and assess the damage. My pants are ripped over one knee, and I’m bleeding. The cut isn’t deep, though. I head back to the cabin and try to concoct a story that will make me sound more masculine and capable than “I tripped and fell because I was fantasizing about you.”
When I get back to the cabin, I find Angela sitting on the futon, looking contemplative and a bit flushed. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, and even in the gray light it’s luminous, like a fuzzy halo around her head.
“Hey,” I say, rather dumbly. What an opener.
“Carter!” She immediately moves towards me and then drops down on her knees in front of me, like she can read my damn mind.
Fucking hell, she looks good like this.
But instead of paying attention to my cock—now solidly at half mast again—she’s peering at my knee with laser focus.
“What happened?” she demands.
“It’s windy out there, and I was hiking over a cliff when this tree branch just?—
“You slipped and fell?” She stands up and levels me with her no nonsense stare.
“Yeah basically,” I admit with a laugh. “How’d you know?”
“When men come into the ER with minor injuries, it’s almost always because they did something asinine. But they always try to cover that fact up with some story of heroism.”
“Glad to be one of the many.”
“Go sit on the futon. I assume your pack has a first aid kit in it?”
I nod.
She starts digging through my pile of things and pulls out the kit. “I said to go sit down.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m going to tend to your wounds.”
“Ange, I’m fine. I can do it myself.”
“Not as well as I can,” she says.
I shrug off my wet jacket and then do as she says, sitting on the futon and rolling up both of my pant legs past the knee.
Angela crouches down in front of me, and begins to clean the wound with a mug of warm soapy water she got from the bathroom and paper towels. Her hands are gentle, but feel capable and steady. She knows exactly what she’s doing, and as she brushes the dirt and gravel embedded in my knee off, and washes the blood away, I feel my cheeks start to heat.
I have no idea why. Maybe it’s her being so close, something I’m rarely treated to. Maybe it’s the soft brush of her hands against my skin, or the faint scent of her hair products, lingering even after a few days.
Once the scrapes are cleaned, she applies pressure to the one that is still bleeding. Then, she carefully dabs ointment on each of the cuts.
“I swear I can just let it air dry,” I say as she takes out bandages from the first aid kit.
“That is the stupidest thing you’ve ever said. Cuts heal best when covered,” she says without looking up at me. “Men,” she says under her breath.
In the end, she covers both knees with bandages, though only one is really bleeding much. But I know better than to argue with her, or to mention the many cuts I’ve gotten while on field work that I’ve simply let be.
She sits on the futon beside me when she’s done. “How was the weather out there? Can we start hiking back soon? I have work tomorrow and it would be great if I could go in.”
“Ange,” I say gently, “the weather is still bad. And the ground is icy. I don’t think we should try to get back today. We’ll go slower than we were on the way here, because we’ll have to be more careful. And I don’t think we’ll be able to get a boat back tonight anyways. Captain Jones’s boat was chartered. The Isle North mailboat goes to one of the other islands, but not to Mount Desert Island directly.”
“So? We can at least take it and start the journey,” she says defiantly. “Maybe I could sleep on the boats and just turn up to work when we get in.”
“The last mailboat is at 4:30. At least it was when I was here last summer.” I grimace when I say this, knowing she won’t be happy.
