Chapter 14
Kieran's POV
She flinched, and I immediately felt like shit. But I couldn't take it back, couldn't soften it, because it was true and we both knew it. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, leaving a streak of dish soap across her cheek.
"Just... be careful, okay?" Her voice was barely above a whisper. "We can't afford trouble. We can't afford to make anyone angry. We need this job. We need—"
"I know, Mom." My throat felt tight. "I know what we need."
She nodded, then pulled Lily into a hug, burying her face in my sister's hair. Over Lily's head, her eyes met mine, red-rimmed and guilty. "It's my fault," she said. "If I was better, if I could provide more, you wouldn't have to transfer to that fancy school. You wouldn't have to deal with all those rich kids looking down on you—"
"Stop." The word came out harsher than I meant it to. "The money from the physics program—I signed that contract. That's on me. Not you."
"Your uniform," Mom was saying. "I can wash it tonight—"
"No," I said, "You've got the early shift tomorrow. You need to sleep. I'll deal with it."
"But—"
"I'll walk home. You two take the 23 bus." I pulled out the crumpled transit pass from my pocket and handed it to her. "Orange Line to the transfer point. You know the way."
Mom's face crumpled. "Your arm. You're hurt. You should—"
"I can barely feel it," I said flatly. And it was mostly true. The nerve damage in my right hand meant most pain signals were muffled, distant, like they were traveling through layers of cotton wool before reaching my brain. The burn was probably bad—I could smell the cooked skin, see the way the fabric had melted into the wound—but it felt far away, dulled, like it was happening to someone else's body.
Mom looked like she wanted to argue, but what could she say? We both knew the nerve damage was real. She swallowed hard, then nodded and took Lily's hand.
As they walked toward the bus stop, Lily kept turning around to look at me. "Kieran's hand," I heard her say to Mom. "Does it really not hurt?"
Mom's voice was thick with tears. "He says it doesn't hurt much, baby. So it doesn't hurt much."
I watched them disappear around the corner—Mom's thin shoulders hunched against the evening wind, Lily's little hand clutched tight in hers. Then I turned back to the food cart and started cleaning up properly, using only my left hand because my right was basically useless.
When I was sure they were really gone, I leaned against the cart and rolled up my sleeve. The fabric had stuck to the burn, dried blood and melted polyester fused to raw skin. I took a deep breath, grabbed the edge with my left hand, and ripped it off in one quick motion.
The fabric took a layer of skin with it. The wound underneath was angry red, already starting to blister, grotesque in the yellowing streetlight. I stared at it for a moment, detached, like I was looking at a piece of meat in a butcher's window.
Then I grabbed one of the water bottles from the cart—lukewarm, half-empty—and poured it directly over the burn. The sensation came through delayed and strange, like feeling something underwater—a sharp pressure that my damaged nerves translated into a dull, throbbing ache instead of the searing pain it should have been. My vision blurred anyway, not from the pain itself but from the shock of it, the wrongness of feeling my body respond without the full signal reaching my brain. I didn't make a sound. Just gritted my teeth and kept pouring until the bottle was empty, watching the water run pink with blood and oil residue.
The air smelled like rust and fried food. I tried to press a wad of napkins against the worst of it, but my right hand was shaking now, the damaged fingers—ring and pinky—completely useless for gripping. I had to do everything one-handed, clumsy and slow.
I was still fumbling with the napkins when I heard footsteps. Fast footsteps. The sharp click-click-click of expensive shoes on pavement.
I looked up, and there she was.
Summer Hayes, running toward me like her life depended on it, her gold-brown curls wild around her face, cheeks flushed red, sweat beading at her temples. She was carrying two CVS bags, plastic handles cutting into her fingers so deep they'd left red marks. She stopped in front of me, breathing hard, and when she saw my arm—the exposed burn, the blood, the raw flesh—she sucked in a sharp breath.
"I..." She was panting, trying to catch her breath. "I made Maya stop at the intersection. I told her I couldn't just leave like that."
She took a deep breath, and her voice came out smaller, almost broken. "I couldn't stop thinking about your arm. I kept thinking—what if it's really bad? What if you need help and you won't ask for it?" Her eyes were shining with unshed tears. "I should've made you take a thousand dollars."
I just stared at her. I'd been so sure she was gone for good, back to her world. But here she was, sweating and out of breath, looking at me like I was something that mattered.
My throat felt tight. "You came back."
"Of course I came back." She set the bags down on the cart steps and started pulling things out. Water bottles. So many water bottles—Aquafina, Dasani, and at least seven or eight glass bottles of Evian, the expensive kind. "I looked it up online. You're not supposed to use ice water on burns. It has to be room temperature or slightly cool. I went to two different CVS stores to get enough."
I watched her arrange them in a line, her hands shaking slightly. "How did you know I hadn't treated it yet?"
She bit her lip, and I saw her eyes go red around the edges. "Because when I was getting back in Maya's car, I saw you hand your mom the bus pass. I saw the way you made sure they got on the bus first, the way you waited until they were out of sight before you even looked at your arm." Her voice dropped to almost a whisper. "You wouldn't let them see. You'd wait until they were gone. You'd do it alone."
Something in my chest cracked open. She was right. She was exactly right, and the fact that she'd been watching that carefully, that she'd seen through me so clearly after only one day of sitting next to each other—it made my throat tighten in a way that had nothing to do with pain.
She pulled out a bottle of saline solution, holding it out to me with both hands like it was something precious. "The pharmacist said this will hurt. But you need to rinse it gently."
Then she opened one of the Evian bottles, tested the temperature against her wrist, and passed it to me. "Start with this one."
She kept going, pulling out burn cream and sterile gauze pads, lining them up on the step with careful precision. Her voice was soft, almost like she was talking to a scared animal. "Rinse for fifteen minutes first. Then apply the cream. Change the gauze every day. Don't let it get wet."
I couldn't stop watching her. The way her round cheeks flushed from running, the way tiny beads of sweat clung to her eyelashes, the way her hands moved with such careful gentleness. Her voice was so soft it felt unreal, like autumn wind off the Charles River—too tender to be meant for someone like me.
I'd never been spoken to like this. Not ever. Even when Mom tried to comfort Lily, she wasn't this soft, this patient. This... careful.