Games Untold (The Inheritance Games #5)

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

T he avenging angel returns.” Those were the first words out of Harry’s mouth when he saw me.

“I unfolded the paper,” I told him, setting my messenger bag down on the floor. I began to unpack my pilfered supplies. “And, for the record, you’re wrong.”

I addressed my next words to Jackson, who stood with his back against the wall, watching the two of us. “I’m doing another IV. I need you to sanitize the needle, however you can.”

I worked in silence. Thirty seconds after sliding the IV into Harry’s vein, I was injecting the antibiotics into it. Then I reached into my bag again—for the oxy.

“Wrong?” Harry said. “Moi?”

“Some things don’t hurt,” I told him. “Some things are numb.” I opened the baggie. “Some things need to stay that way.”

I was talking about him, and I was talking about me .

“What did you do, Hannah?” Jackson’s voice was low—and alarmed.

I didn’t even look back at him as I gave Harry the oxy. “What I had to.”

For five days, Harry and I barely said a word to each other on my nightly visits. I brought pills, and he left me offerings on the floor beside his mattress. Half of them were folded-paper marvels, each more elaborate than the last. The other half consisted of grocery lists.

Even with the oxy, he still wanted bourbon—and lemons.

Freaking lemons.

The antibiotics did the trick with whatever infection his body had been cooking up, and dosing him with the oxy let me do more than dress his burns. Using what I’d seen in the burn unit and a scalpel from Jackson’s med kit, I’d started removing dead skin.

Sometimes, my patient cursed me for it. Sometimes, I ignored him. Sometimes, I cursed him right back.

Every day, Harry wanted more pills—and more and more and more. Once he’d turned a corner, I started cutting him back, and he got really charming.

“I’m guessing you’re a virgin.”

That didn’t merit a response, so I didn’t give him one.

He let his eyes rake over mine and down, his gaze settling somewhere in the vicinity of my lips. “You’re too easy,” he commented, but it was clear from his tone: He wasn’t talking about sex anymore. He was talking about getting a rise out of me.

I’d given him nothing, and he was acting like my face had laid my every emotion bare.

“You don’t like being looked at.” Harry allowed his lips to curve in the subtlest of smiles. “Tasted, like wine.”

If he thought I was going to drug him just to shut him up—just to get him to stop looking at me like that —he was going to be sorely disappointed. “Better wine than barbecue,” I said. It took a moment for that comment to land.

I saw the exact moment he realized I was referencing his burns.

Harry snorted “Touché, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward.” He propped himself up on his elbows, his back barely elevated off the bed. “I’m nicer when I’m high, and, coincidentally, you are also nicer when I’m high.”

“No. I’m not.”

With abs of steel and an iron will, he pulled himself the rest of the way into a sitting position.

That had to hurt , I thought, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell that from his face.

“Look, Mom,” Harry said, his voice dry as dirt, “no hands.”

“I’m so proud,” I said flatly.

He surged to his feet. Instinctively, I reached out, my hands avoiding the worst of his burns as I wedged them under his arms, catching him when he stumbled. That left the two of us far too close—close enough for him to murmur directly into my ear.

“Isn’t it about time,” he said softly, his breath a ghost brushing over my cheek, “for another grocery run?” I lowered him back down onto the mattress, and damn him , he smirked.

“You have my list.”