Slide by Garrett Leigh Read Free Book Online Page A

warmth at the base of my spine, I didn’t feel a thing as she put eight stitches in my palm and cleaned and dressed the burn. She wrapped my hand up the same way Pete had before she left the room to get a tetanus shot.
    I let out a long breath and looked up to find Pete watching me closely. He searched my eyes for a moment before he grinned and dropped his hand from my back. “Better?”
    I nodded, ignoring the lingering sensation his touch had left on my skin. “Yeah, thanks.”
    “So…,” he said. “I’m confused.”
    “Hmm? About what?”
    “How do you tattoo people if you don’t like needles and blood?”
    I attempted to flex my hand. The stitches caught and pulled. “It wasn’t that part; it was the burned bit.”
    A look of comprehension passed through Pete’s wise brown eyes. “Burns are pretty gory sometimes. I don’t like them either.”
    “How does that work for you?”
    “It doesn’t,” he said with a wry grin. “Sometimes you’ve just got to do stuff you hate.”
    It was a sentiment I knew all too well.
    Jane reappeared just a few moments later with the tetanus shot in her hand. I felt Pete’s eyes on me, but this time I didn’t hesitate to raise my uninjured arm when she stepped forward.
    The needle was about to pierce my skin when Pete suddenly stopped her. “Can you put it in his other arm? He’s left-handed.”
    I stared quizzically at him as Jane nodded agreeably and moved back to my other arm. “It’ll be sore later,” he explained. “You still have to work today.”
    Oh.
    With the nausea from earlier gone, I watched the needle go in and the plunger release its contents into my body. It didn’t hurt, but my blood felt chilled for a moment, like it wasn’t my own. That was weird. In rehab I’d met addicts who’d inject themselves with just about anything, but having a shot was a new experience for me, and I didn’t like it.
    Jane taped a pad over the puncture hole and rubbed my shoulder. “All done,” she said. “Keep it clean and dry and come back if you have any problems. Otherwise, Pete can take the stitches out in ten days.”
    I looked at him. “You can do that?”
    “Sure.”
    I wrote my name on a final bit of paper, and we were all done. I slid from the bed and Pete glanced at his watch.
    “See?” he said. “In and out of the ER in thirty minutes. You don’t see that every day.”
    I’d have to take his word for that.

CHAPTER FIVE
     
     
    I MADE my sitting in one piece, and it was good, really good. One of the best I’d ever done. The design I etched on the back of the young stoner kid was also the biggest custom piece I’d ever had commissioned. Until the night before, I’d been nervous as hell, but cutting my hand, sleeping in Pete’s bed, and the trip to the hospital had distracted me and left me no time to get agitated. Once I’d set up my tools and gotten myself together, I put my head down and got on with the job. It was over before I could blink.
    That was kinda typical for me. Whenever I drew, whether with a gun or a pencil, I seemed to forget where I was. It was an escape, even when I was just a kid and scribbling on the bunk bed above me. On the street, I could waste a whole day scrawling on the sidewalk. I wouldn’t notice anyone watching until I sat back on my heels and saw a pile of coins on the ground beside me. My life was different these days, but some things never changed.
    I didn’t notice Ted watching me until I was finished; he hadn’t been there when I started. His heavy footsteps came up behind me. I stepped around the chair my client had just vacated, tripping over my own feet, and reached over the back to zip my bag.
    “That was good work,” he said, ignoring my impression of a skittering cat. “You had me a little worried when I saw you all trussed up.” He nodded at my bandaged hand. “Everything okay?”
    I’d pretty much forgotten about my messed-up hand while I was working, but it had started to throb the moment I