Page 27 of Restoration

“No, it’s not. It’s terrible, and it’s going to get infected.”

“Well, we don’t have many options here. I don’t have shoes or bandages or antibiotics.”

“I know that, but at least we need to keep all these cuts clean and dry. These must be hurting you like hell.”

“It’s not that bad.”

“Liar.” I peer up at him and am surprised by how stiffly he’s standing. He’s not even looking down at me. He’s staring over at the beach toward his right. “You have to let me clean them up, Edmund.”

“Fine,” he grumbles, still not looking at me. “But you’ve got to put on your shirt first.”

I freeze, startled by the words. Then I glance down at myself self-consciously. I’m wearing nothing but my wet tank top and panties, and I was so distracted by his injured feet that I completely forgot.

“Oh. Sorry.” I’m flushed as I stand back up. “Of course.” I step over to pull on my loose top. “Okay. Done. Sorry about that.”

“Thanks,” he mumbles, finally looking back over at me. “No worries.”

He’s smiling again as he agrees to stretch out on a towel so I can clean and tend to his feet, but I’m still deeply uncomfortable.

Edmund has never been remotely conscious of my body before. He’s almost never appeared to notice I have one.

But then I’ve never been crouching at his feet almost naked, so that probably explains it.

I clean and dry all the cuts on his feet as well as I can with our current resources, and I tell him he’s going to have to stay out of the forest until they’ve started to heal.

He’s lying back like he’s taking a nap, and he mumbles out a relaxed agreement to my directions. He’s clearly forgotten about his response to my body.

But I haven’t.

six

IWAKE UP THE FOLLOWINGmorning thinking about a night two years ago.

Edmund had just spent three days suffering through some sort of food poisoning from hell, and he was finally able to stay out of the bathroom for several hours at a time. His concierge doctor had stopped by to check on him once a day, but otherwise Alicia and I were the ones taking care of him.

When he was really sick, he was a pretty good patient. He didn’t whine very much even when he was puking his guts out, and he exerted the energy necessary to haul himself to the bathroom no matter how weak he was. But as soon as he started feeling better, he began acting like no one had ever been as victimized as him in the history of the world.