The Body Finder by Kimberly Derting Read Free Book Online

radiating up through her hands and knees. Humiliation threatened to overcome the hurt.
    Jay hauled her up. She could smell his musky scent in hissweatshirt, and she tried to hold her breath against it. This was bad…this was a bad, bad place for her to be.
    â€œAre you hurt?” He pulled her away just enough so he could look down at her.
    She bit her lip, trying to will the tears away. She blinked and looked back at him. “I’m okay,” she responded, but her voice broke, making her words sound puny, pathetic even.
    He cringed as he bent down and looked at the angry red scrapes on both her knees. He reached out to lightly brush away some of the dirt from them, but she knew that he was afraid of hurting her, so he barely touched them. “We’d better get you back so we can clean those up.” He straightened, and then surprised her by picking her up as he started to carry her along the trail.
    She struggled against him. “I can walk!” she protested, feeling even more like a baby as he held her in his arms.
    He looked down at her in disbelief. “Are you sure? ’Cause I think I just saw you trying, and it didn’t work out so well for you.” He didn’t seem inclined to let her down just yet; he just kept walking.
    She laughed but insisted again through her teary giggles, “Seriously, put me down! I feel stupid enough already—I don’t need you treating me like an invalid.”
    He slowed down unsurely before setting Violet on her own two feet. Internally she cursed herself for being so stubborn, and she wished that he’d put up more of a fight. Why couldn’t he have insisted on carrying her all the way home?
    Instead, he reached out and grabbed her hand. “If it’s all right with you, I think I’ll keep ahold of you anyway. I don’twant to be responsible for letting you fall again.”
    She didn’t argue.
    The walk home went way too quickly for Violet. Jay had led her through the trees and into the clearing behind her house in no time at all.
    Her parents had already gone for the day before she and Jay arrived back at her house. Her dad was working, as he did almost every Saturday, even when it wasn’t tax season, and her mom had rented out a booth at the farmer’s market to display some of her paintings.
    Jay insisted on carrying her up the back steps and into the kitchen, and this time Violet didn’t complain when he lifted her. He set her down gently on the kitchen counter, and then he rummaged through the cupboard while Violet told him where the Band-Aids were. He came back with bandages, gauze, cotton balls, antibacterial wash, and two tubes of ointment. It seemed like overkill to Violet, but she didn’t say anything. She wanted to see what he planned to do.
    â€œOkay, this is probably gonna sting,” he warned as he leaned over and began cleaning her wounds.
    It did sting, more than Violet let on, and she had to bite her lip as the tears came back all over again. But she let him keep working without even flinching, which was no small feat as he stripped away the layers of dirt from her skin.
    The wounds were big, and round, and raw. She thought she looked like a little kid with the giant scrapes on her knees, and she imagined that they were going to scab over and possibly even scar. She felt like such an idiot for falling over her own two clumsy feet.
    But Jay was gentle, and he took his time, being careful not to hurt her. She admired his patience and took perverse pleasure in his touch. He didn’t look up to see how she was doing; he just kept working until he was satisfied that her scrapes were cleaned out. And then he picked up the antibacterial wash and some cotton balls.
    Violet sucked in her breath when he brushed the soaked cotton ball against the angry red abrasions. Jay looked up at her but didn’t stop dabbing at them. Instead he blew on her knees as he labored over them, just like her