Page 18 of Shatter

Somebody held her arm out straight and took his time.

I shrug out of my cut and lay it across my thigh, keeping it off the asphalt without thinking about it.

"You're bleeding a lot." I drag my T-shirt over my head and ball it up. "I need to put pressure on your arm. Can I?"

Her gaze drops to my bare chest and the ink across it, then to the shirt in my hand.

The rock lowers an inch.

Then she lets it fall, and it cracks against the asphalt, and she holds out her arm.

Gods.

I wrap the shirt around her forearm and press down hard, and she hisses, and I say I'm sorry, I'm sorry, and keep pressing.

Her skin is cold.

It's seventy-two degrees at two in the morning, and her skin is cold and clammy under my hands.

She's shaking in long, hard waves, all the way from her shoulders down.

Shock.

She's going into shock.

"What's your name?" I tie the shirt off tight above the cut. "Your real name."

Her eyes snap up to mine.

For a second, something opens in her face, like a door cracking.

Then it slams shut.

"Katie." She says it clearly, like a word she's practiced in a mirror. "It's Katie."

It isn't.

I've practiced a name in a mirror, too.

"Okay." I nod. "Katie."

She's shaking harder now, her teeth starting to chatter even though the air is thick as bathwater.

She's clutching the torn halves of her shirt together at her throat with her good hand, knuckles white.

My hands are on the leather before I've decided anything.

I pull my cut off my thigh and wrap it around her shoulders, pulling the leather closed across her chest and holding it there with both hands so the warmth stays against her.

It swallows her.

The shoulders hang halfway down her arms, and the patch on the back must be spread across her spine, but all I'm thinking about is her lips, which are going a bad color, and the blood seeping through my T-shirt on her arm.

She grabs the front of the leather with her good hand and hangs on.

"Who was he?" I ask.

She shakes her head.