“No,” I said, and I felt the tremors wrack through me again, stopping what I was going to say. I didn’t know if it was my anger or the ketamine or the fact my heart rate was accelerating the delivery of the drugs still in my system. “No, Jack, please,” I looked to Bishop, wanting him to deny what was said.
Bishop, placed his hand on me too, “I didn’t intend for him to be there, Perrin. But, he was,” he said in a defeated tone. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry!” I raged. I knew I was too loud, and about to lose it, my chest hammered and hurt by how hard my heart was racing. I had never lost my shit like this before. “I’ll fucking kill you, Agent Bishop Frost,” I hissed through more tremors. Jack was trying to put his hands on me where it wouldn’t hurt, but it would calm me down. I was beyond that now.
Bishop’s eyes looked so sad, so lost, for a moment I wanted to take it back, almost. Jack had one hand on me and one on Bishop, who looked resigned.
“Calm down, Perrin,” Jack said, in his most authoritative tone, enough to get me to snap my mouth shut. “I was there because I forced myself in. It’s notBish’s fault.”
Jack’s hands turned my face to him, and I could see the tears comingfromhis eyes. “I couldn’t just leave you, baby. Couldn’t. Bishop - I would have gone crazy without him. He allowed me to be close to you. He gave us that one night. And if he hadn’t let me in there, you know I would have gotten the video anyway. Youknowit, P.”
I sagged back against the pillows, too wrecked from the tremors in my body and the look on Jack’s face knocking me back, and the exhaustion of such an adrenaline spike after everything that happened hit me hard, so hard I shook against Jack’s hands. The pain now had multiples.
“Perrin - I . . ..” Bishop started, but I held up a hand, breathing in for a moment to let the tremors pass, at least.
“That was you?” I managed to ask, my teeth clenched as I could feel the cold sweat and the tremor made my arms seize up painfully. “That night,itwas you that allowed Jack to come to me?” I asked Bishop, this time through the tremors.
“Yeah, it was,” he said.
I closed my eyes as one tremor was so bad I almost came off the bed. “S-sor-sorry,” I said, to Bishop. “I don’t usually get mad like that, I…“
Bishop put his hand on mine, and another shake went through me and Jack was calling the nurse in at that point, having watched all he could.
“You don’t have to apologize to me, Perrin. Holden is in a jail cell in federal custody in Denver. The US attorney is already cracking his knuckles about the evidence we pulled from his house, the evidence it has led us to, and the evidence you got from him. We could not have done it without you. But,” he paused, those grey eyes drilling me with the importance of the statement, “there is no way that the cooperation of Jack or the foundation or Mann properties is part of that official file. I made sure of it. Holden will never know, never hear it as part of the case. Jack’s name isnowhere.”
I sighed and leaned back on the pillows, more exhausted than I had ever felt in my life,and reached with what I could of my braced right hand to clasp Bishop’s hand. “Sorry,” I said again, hating how weak my voice sounded as the emotional outburst took its toll. I was on some sort of fucking rollercoaster, seeing things that weren’t there, shaking to the bone with the ketamine after-effects, bruised to the point it hurt to move.
“If I hadn’t been there with Bishop, I couldn’t have made it,” Jack said softly. “I owe him.”
I looked at Bishop. “If Jack likes you, then I do,” I said. “Doesn’t mean I don’t wish to God he hadn’t seen all that.”
“I wish it too, Perrin. If I could -“ he began, but I cut him off.
“Can’t change it, but if you helped Jack, and you gave us that night, then everything else is forgiven,” I assured him. “Sorry I was an ass.”
Jack and Bishop both seemed to relax then, and they told me more about the operation, although I could tell there was only so much Bishop could say about some things. And watching them together made me see that he had been a good friend to Jack, and I realized that Jack couldn’t say anything to his brothers, so withoutBish, Jack would have really been all alone. That was a sobering thought, and I realized that instead of being upset with Bishop, I owed the man a huge debt.
I couldn’t say any of that, though, because the nurse came in, and I tried to ask her what they were giving me, but I couldn’t form the words. So I concentrated on patting Bishop’s hand, and muttering “sorry,” and holding Jack’s hand as everything got fuzzy, no matter how hard I tried to hang on.
Jack
Blond curls covered my chest in a messy heap of gold.
I smiled as I slowly woke up, feeling Perrin’s warm breath across my stomach as he slept with my abs as his pillow, his body cradled between my thighs. I fell asleep reading with him curled up on me, and this is how we ended up.
I should have known how intensely Perrin would take to his own recovery. His body had lost significant muscle mass while the Holden operation was underway, and even more after it when the injuries to his kidneys and ribs had left him inactive for a much longer time than he would have liked.
But now, weeks later, his broken arm was still in a cast and his other one, sprained from the defensive posture of taking Holden’s assault, remained in a brace. That hadn’t stopped him of course, he ate lean, worked on strengthening his lower body, and did everything suggested, and more, to heal mentally from what had happened.
Some days like yesterday he came home from therapy worn out and quiet, seeking comfort I was all too ready to give him. Ketamine is a nasty drug if its side effects aren’t cut—something I know way too much about after picking my mom’s doctor brain and reading as much as I can get my hands on. When Ketamine was used frequently in hospitals, it wasn’t allowed to be used on pilots or military personnel very often because of the danger of bad after-effects. Almost like a bad trip that can come unexpectedly, almost like an acid flash-back. It has made the intrusive memory situation a bit different than PTSD, but I know Perrin can get through this.
Perrin in some ways made the best patient anyone could ask for, but I am still afraid to touch him the way I really want to. I wasn’t sure when he would want or be ready for the intimacy that had always been such a large part of our relationship. I didn’t want to ask, didn’t want to push him more than he was already pushing himself.
He was quieter now, lost in his own thoughts sometimes, not unlike what I am used to from Quinn. Perrin keeps a light on in the hallway outside his bedroom at night these days, and sometimes I see him stare intently at a dark corner or a strange shadow, his whole body stiff until he is able to wrestle his brain to relax.
Perrin tried to explain it to me—that while his mind knew Holden wasn't there, it didn’t seem to stop what he saw. There were triggers, he told me, and when thosehappened,he just had to ground himself to the here and now. The first time in the hospital had been the worst of it, and after working through it with his therapist, I could see him catch himself when he thought he saw Holden.
“It’s the slant of light, I think,” he had told me, “shadows, they make me feel like I’m seeing . . . maybe because it was shadowed in the locker room.”
