Chapter 30 How not to save a delinquent

Chapter 30 How not to save a delinquent
Hazel’s POV
I turned away again, nodding to myself. Yes. This was fine. I was absolutely not the kind of person who felt guilty leaving a bleeding delinquent to possibly die next to a dumpster.

Definitely not. I even smiled. I sped up. Shuffle. Another sharp wince. I stopped so hard my bad hip screamed. I exhaled the longest, most dramatic sigh of my life. “Oh for－ why am I like this,” I muttered.
Why did I have morals. Why did I have empathy. Why was I cursed with a conscience when I could’ve been a hot villain instead. I spun around and limped back toward him, every step fueled by irritation and martyrdom. 
He heard me coming and looked up, eyes sharp despite the blood loss. “The hell are you comin’ back for?” he sneered.
I dropped to my knees beside him, ignoring the fresh wave of pain shooting up my hip. “Shut up.” I pulled a small strawberry-red handkerchief from my breast pocket, clean, soft, tragically unused until now, and lifted it toward his forehead.

He immediately grabbed my wrist, grip iron-tight. “What－ tryin’ to strangle me with that?”
I stared at him, deadpan. “Yes. Obviously. I always carry floral murder cloths for surprise assassinations.”
He squinted harder. “You’re definitely tryna poison me.”
My eye twitched. “With what, fabric softener? Relax, you paranoid raccoon. I’m trying to wipe the blood off your face before it scares small children.”

He didn’t let go. I glanced pointedly at his hand clamped around my wrist. “For someone allegedly dying, you’ve got a very healthy grip.”
He hesitated. “…You swear you not messin’ with me?”
I leaned closer, lowering my voice. “If I wanted you dead, I’d let you bleed out and keep walking. Think about it.”
He stared at me. I stared back. After a long beat, he released my wrist, eyes still wary. “You try anything funny, I’ll－” He tightened his grip on the shovel. 
I smiled sweetly.
In my head, I imagined smashing that shovel over his skull, burying him with it, planting flowers, charging admission. Very calming. “Noted,” I said. “Now sit still before you redecorate the pavement.”

I pressed the cloth to his forehead, not gently, but not cruelly either. The blood had already dried, so I had to scrub a little.
He hissed. “The hell!”
“Oh hush,” I said. “If you can fight a lawn mower, you can survive a napkin.”
He didn’t flinch after that, just stared at me from under his lashes. When I glanced down, he scowled and looked away. Ungrateful. I caught my reflection in a puddle of questionable origin and snorted internally. Here I was, on my knees beside a dumpster, hip screaming, tending to a bleeding delinquent like this was some twisted community service project.

And annoyingly, he was still ridiculously attractive. Even bruised. Even bleeding. Even with a swollen purple eye that should’ve ruined everything. It didn’t. Life was deeply unfair. How dare he look this good while I’d looked like a feverish goblin yesterday. Where was my cinematic suffering glow-up? Life had favorites and I definitely wasn’t one of them. I realized I’d been staring when he snapped, “What?”

I immediately looked away and started whistling badly, like that would erase the crime. “Nothing. Admiring… the concrete.”
I tied my loosened tie around his forehead, securing the cloth. Carefully. Against my better judgment. He glanced down at the unlit cigarette between his fingers. For a second, he looked… quiet. I cleared my throat. “So. Do you have a name? Or do people just scream when you show up?”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “You don’t get my name.”
I sighed. “I’m literally cleaning your blood you ungrateful brute. Fine then I’ll make one up.”

He muttered something.

“Hailey?” I blinked. “Who names a guy－”
“Kael,” he snapped. “KA-EL. Damn you annoying.”
“Ohhh,” I nodded. “Kael. Right. That makes－”
I froze. 
Oh. Kael, I’ve heard that name somewhere before… Oh no. Ponytails. The whispers. The shovel. My eyes widened. 
“The Gravedigger,” I breathed.
His brow furrowed. “The grave what now－”

I tried to hold it in. I failed. I laughed. Not loud, wheezy, breathless, like my body couldn’t decide if this was funny or absurd. I clutched my hip, sinking slightly forward, shoulders shaking.
“You?” I gasped. “You’re the Great Big Terrifying Gravedigger?”
He scooted backward slowly, eyes narrowing. “Why  you laughin’ like that?”

I couldn’t stop. I was on my knees, one hand braced on the ground, hair wild, laughing like a witch mid-curse. People were afraid of this guy? I wiped tears from my eyes. “Oh my God. I thought you’d be bigger. Scarier.”
He stared at me like I’d finally snapped. And honestly? Fair. I probably looked insane, kneeling beside a dumpster, half-limping, half-cackling, tie askew, one hip screaming while I laughed at a bleeding delinquent.

Kael had put a very respectable distance between us now, his shoulders hunched, his body angled away like I was radioactive.
He sat there with his back to me, avoiding me like I’d just crawled out of a psychiatric ward, and honestly? I liked that. At least now he’d think twice before threatening me with his beloved murder-shovel again. The laughter dragged on longer than it should have.
My chest started to ache. My hip screamed at me for every second I stayed crouched like that, but I refused to stop until it burned itself out. By the time I finally calmed down, Kael had fully committed to pretending I didn’t exist. Fine. I wiped my eyes, sucked in a breath, and decided to do the mature thing for once: introduce myself properly. With flair. With pride.

I glanced over my shoulder at him and tried to stand. “Hazel,” I said, forcing steadiness into my voice. “That’s my－”

Pain hit me like a switch flipping. It wasn’t gradual. It wasn’t polite. It was sudden and vicious, like something sharp had been driven straight into my hip joint. I sucked in a breath and dropped right back down, palms slapping against the concrete as my knees buckled.
No. No, no, no. The pain came again, worse this time, radiating outward until my leg felt useless. Behind me, Kael scoffed, still not looking.
“Hazel?” he muttered. “What kinda name is that?”

I tried to answer him, but all that came out was a broken sound I didn’t recognize as my own. That made him turn.Slowly. He looked at me like he expected to catch me laughing again, but instead he saw me gripping my hip, teeth clenched so hard my jaw hurt, body trembling despite my efforts to stay still.
He frowned. “…The hell is wrong with you?”, Then, annoyed, “Cut it out.”

I didn’t even look at him. I rolled onto my stomach, pressing my face to the cold concrete, and started dragging myself forward with my arms. It was humiliating. Pathetic. Every movement sent pain straight through me, but staying still somehow felt worse. Behind me, he snapped, “Look, I know you’re weird, but quit the act. It’s not funny anymore.”
You are unbelievably dense, I thought, breathing through my teeth. Truly. A medical marvel. 

Another wave of pain hit and I froze, fingers curling against the ground as a sharp hiss escaped me. He clicked his tongue. “I’m not fallin’ for this. I ain’t stupid.”
I tried to move again. My leg refused. That’s when I heard footsteps, uneven ones. Slow. Careful. He stopped in front of me, and when I cracked my eyes open, he was kneeling, his expression no longer annoyed, just wary.
“…Hey,” he said, quieter now.
I didn’t answer.
My throat burned and tears were pressing dangerously close, so I buried my face in my arms instead. If I looked at him, they’d spill, and absolutely not. I refused to cry in front of him.

A hand touched my shoulder. Light. Hesitant. “Hey－ hey,” he said, sharper now. “Hazel… ginger snap, right? Are you－”
I shoved him away hard enough that it surprised us both.
“Don’t,” I snapped. “Leave me alone.” My voice cracked on the last word. I hated that it did. He hit the ground with a grunt and swore under his breath. For a second, I thought that would be it, that he’d get angry and leave. Instead, being the stubborn bastard that he was, he was back beside me almost immediately.

“I’m tryin’ to help you,” he said, frustration roughening his voice. “C’mon you’re in pain.”
“No!” I snapped back, even as tears betrayed me and slid down my cheeks. “I told you to leave me alone!”. My voice broke. That stopped him. He went quiet.   For a long moment, I thought he’d finally listened.
Then he said, lower, “No.”

I stiffened.

“‘Cause I remember tellin’ you multiple times to leave me the fuck alone,” he continued. “And you still came back to help me.”
I felt him shift, his fingers brushing the cloth and tie wrapped around his forehead.
“So yeah,” he muttered. “Ain’t no way in hell I’m leavin’ ya now.”

Before I could argue, before I could even process it, he slid an arm under my knees and another around, and suddenly I wasn’t on the ground anymore.