Damn, he had a point. He wasn’t monologuing. But he wasn’t exactly telling her the whole truth, now was he? “Yeah, I guess.” If he was one of the guys in the black hats, he had no reason to keep up the pretense. She was trapped and injured. Didn’t matter now if she was biddable or not, did it? At least he wasn’t moving toward her any more. Human or not, at this moment Sunshine needed her space. She had a lot to process and her mind just wasn’t working like it should. She would start to see sense and then she’d remember that she was stuck and bleeding. Maybe the doctor had been right. Posttraumaticthingummy. She felt squishy, as though she might fall apart again, even without any provocation. It was all she could do to remind herself that it wasn’t so bad, at least she wasn’t shackled this time. But there was still the matter of how he looked at her arm like a starving man. Maybe other people around here wouldn’t have noticed, but Sunshine had learned to be vigilant about that kind of thing.
He sounded so… apologetic. To be honest, she didn’t know what to make of that. She’d known addicts, hypeheads, who sounded the same way. It didn’t often fall to her, but they fed some of the better class of derelict from the side door at her diner. In fact, she made a point of setting aside or freezing any leftovers from the bakery every night so there’d be something to hand out the next day. So she believed Sam’s remorse; she just didn’t trust him not to try something anyway. She was pretty sure he’d feel bad about it afterward, but she had no guarantee that she’d be left in any state to accept his apology then. It was safer for them both if they continued to keep their distance. “Okay, it’s complicated. I’ll buy that, but” she reiterated, “you’re not a demon. I’m not a demon.” With two shining black eyes staring out of his face, she felt it was worth saying a few times. Sunshine peeked at her shoulder. It was stupid; she should be used to it by now, but the sight of her own blood still made her stomach wriggle. This really wasn’t all that bad. She’d had so much worse. She just felt silly for not being more careful in the first place.
Was it bad that her immediate impulse the second he turned his back to her was to run? She didn’t. Even if he’d been a vampire or just about anything else Sunshine was familiar with, she’d never have made it to the door. And if he was who he said he was? Yeah, then she would have been walking out on her once chance of safety and help. Right now, she wanted a bath. She wanted scotch and a team of SOF’s – partblood or not – telling her that it was going to be okay. But she wasn’t going to get that. It was up to her to pull herself together and keep going. There wasn’t any other option. No sitting this one out. Sunshine took an audible breath. “Can I borrow your first aid kit?” She hated to keep drawing attention to it, but if she ignored the problem, it would just keep bleeding. It wasn’t going away on its own. She knew. She’d been hoping for that this whole time and so far it’d been a no-go. So she risked it. If he could turn his back to her, which she knew mustn’t have been easy for him, then she could try a little too.