“When someone is bleeding, that usually means they are not, in fact, okay.” He shook his head as he let go of my shoulders. “Jesus. Sit down and let me take care of you.”

“I can’t sit down.” I winced.

He lowered his head so that he was almost eye level with me. Up close, I couldn’t make out the difference between his pupils and his irises. “Why can’t you sit down?”

I shuffled from one foot to the other, feeling incredibly vulnerable being that I had no shirt on and all. “There’s this piece of glass stuck in my skin, and I think sitting down is going to make it worse.”

“What?” he shouted, and I flinched. “Why in the hell didn’t you say something downstairs?”

“Because I didn’t know it was stuck in my skin, and it really isn’t a big deal, but—”

“But you don’t even like splinters. Jesus, Syd….where is it?”

I pointed to where the tiny speck of glass was.

Kyler went down on his knees, and my eyes went wide. All kinds of dirty thoughts exploded in my head, totally inappropriate at that moment, but the button on my jeans was still undone and, well…“I can’t see it,” he said. “You’re going to have to come downstairs where there’s more light.”

“I’m—”

“You are not okay and you are not going to argue with me over this.” Jaw set in a determined line, he reached around me and grabbed a towel off the rack. He tucked it over my shoulders, folding it across my hands. “Come on.”

Realizing there was a good chance that he’d just drag me downstairs, I followed him out of the bedroom and into the hall. He told me to wait there while he disappeared into the hallway bathroom and returned with peroxide and a little first aid kit in his hand.

I sighed. This was going to suck. Could be worse, I knew that. He could be plucking out buckshot.

We ended up in the kitchen, much to my dismay. There were a lot of windows in there, but we really didn’t have much of a choice.

Kyler positioned me so I was just below the window, but close enough that he could see. Going down on his knees once more, he parted the edges of the towel with a frown. “Damn, that’s a piece of glass.”

“Told you.”

His head bent and several strands of hair fell across his forehead as he dug around in the little box with a red cross. “You can’t leave it in your skin, Syd. It will get infected.”

“I wasn’t suggesting that. I was just sort of hoping my skin would quickly and naturally reject it.”