Re-write #4

This is the little section I posted a few days ago. This is a fairly pivotal section, one of the parts I imagined over and over. That's why it was so important for me to make it good. Despite the larger plot calamities I'm facing, there are still some things I KNOW about this story, and love.

So, here's the before:

John was dressed but hadn’t showered, nor had he shaved. He had put on a button down shirt and different jeans. His eyebrows pressed downward, and his eyes were on her hand, which he was holding. He seemed to be following the paths of freckles on the back of her hand and up her arm. “Remember what you said? About the freckles?”
Nina’s heart started to throb, she knew what was coming, and wanted to press him on why he’d gotten dressed. “Blood Freckles.” She said, clearing her throat. She pulled the sheet up over her in an attempt to avert the goosebumps. She’d said it because his arms were covered in tiny red dots of blood after Jeremy shot himself. She’d been holding him on the front steps of her house as the police came. They looked like freckles.
He smiled and looked up at her. “They had had to force me to wash them off.” He looked down at her hand.
“I wouldn’t come inside that night.”
He looked up at her. “Really?”
“My dad dragged me inside, praying against whatever had possessed me. I kicked and screamed.” She looked up into his face. “I thought Jeremy was still there. I wanted to try and…talk to him.”

And the after, in which I wove a bit of the backstory in with the present. Hopefully this was successful:

John was dressed but hadn’t showered, nor had he shaved. He had put on a button down shirt and different jeans. His eyebrows pressed downward, and his eyes were on her hand, which he was holding. He seemed to be following the paths of freckles on the back of her hand and up her arm. “Remember what you said? About the freckles?”
Nina’s heart started to throb, dread rising up in her as she eyed his packed bags. “Blood Freckles.” She said, clearing her throat and shaking off the embarrassment of having said such a strange thing. The memory was as fresh as yesterday and year melted away into the day Jeremy died. After the gunshot, she dragged John to her house, her mother panicking, torn between running in and calling for help and inspecting Nina for wounds. They got to the steps outside the door of the kitchen and crumpled down onto them. Nina held John in her arms as though he was the smaller child. He held her back with shaking arms that were covered in specks of blood, gripping at her clothes.
He tilted his head to one side and looked up at her. “They had had to force me to wash them off.” He looked down at her hand, memory pressing in on his mind. His mother pleading with him to undress, to shower, to step away from the tragedy and let her comfort him. He’d refused for about an hour when his stepdad came and pushed him into the shower, causing him to fall backward, scraping the backs of his legs on the tracks for the shower door. Gary shut the doors, trapping John in the water that proceeded to stream away with the last of Jeremy. The last of Jeremy that was real.
“I wouldn’t come inside that night.” Nina said thinking further into the memory of her knees raw from sitting in the grass at the sun went down. Her parents calling her, concerned from the house after all the police and the men from the coroners office left.
He looked up at her. “Really?”
“Finally my dad dragged me inside, praying against whatever had possessed me. I kicked and screamed.” She looked up into his face. “I thought Jeremy was still there.”