“Sit,” June instructed Milo, and he complied, lowering himself carefully onto the edge of the bed. She crouched in front of him, unlacing his boots with gentle efficiency and tugging off his jeans. “Xavier, can you look for a clean t-shirt in the bottom drawer? I tossed some things in there that you guys left behind.” She carefully helped him out of his shirt, making sure not to jostle his shoulder.
His body was a map of scrapes and bruises, and guilt twisted in my gut.
June looked up at me. “Xavier, I need your help. Go get the first aid kit from under the bathroom sink. Let’s clean his abrasions, okay?”
The task gave me something to focus on, which might have been her intention. Her first aid kit was easy to find in her neatly organized bathroom and very well-stocked.
June took the kit from me and set to work with the same focused efficiency she brought to everything. “This is going to sting,” she warned before dabbing antiseptic on the worst of the road rash.
Milo hissed through his teeth but didn’t pull away. I stood there watching June tend to injuries that were my fault.
“Done,” June announced, applying the last bandage. “Now let’s get you properly into bed.”
Between the two of us, we got Milo settled against the pillows, his injured shoulder propped carefully with extra cushions.
“I’ll get water,” June said, squeezing my arm as she passed. “Stay with him.”
I sank down on the edge of the bed, careful not to jostle anything. Milo’s eyes were closed, his breathing shallow. “Need anything?”
“I need you to stop freaking out and to stop looking at me like I’m dying,” he mumbled without opening his eyes. “I’m fine. Dislocated shoulder’s set now. It’ll heal in no time. And everything else is cosmetic.”
“You could have—” I couldn’t finish the sentence. Could have died. Could have been paralyzed. Could have lost so much more than a few weeks of riding.
His eyes opened, finding mine. “But I didn’t. I’m here. We’re okay.”
“We’re not okay,” I said, my voice cracking. “Nothing about this is okay. I almost got you killed because I’m too fucked up to know when to quit.”
June returned with water and pain medication, setting them on the nightstand. She stood there for a moment, looking between us, then held out her hand to me. “Come here.”
I let her pull me to my feet, let her lead me a few steps away from the bed. And then she wrapped her arms around me, holding tight, and something inside me shattered.
“You did good tonight,” she said against my chest. “You stayed calm. You called for help. You got him to the hospital and did everything in your power to make sure Milo was safe.”
I shook my head violently, pulling back. “I almost got him killed. I should have—we shouldn’t have been there. I’m poison. I ruin everything I touch. You should—you should just let me go before I destroy this too.”
Her hands came up to frame my face, forcing me to meet her eyes. “You’re being stupid,” she said bluntly, no sugarcoating, no gentle letdown.
“June—”
“No, listen to me.” Her grip on my face tightened slightly. “No one who is poison would care as deeply as you do. No one who is poison would have done that stupid five senses thing to calm me down in the hospital. You’re just human like the rest of us, and you deserve love. You deserve happiness. You deserve to have people who care about you. These are facts, Xavier. Not opinions. Facts.”
“You don’t understand—”
“I understand perfectly,” she interrupted. “You’ve internalized years of negative messaging about your worth. But that doesn’t make it true.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re valuable. You’re talented. You’re loved. Get used to it.”
“Hey,” Milo called from the bed, his voice rough. “Are you two just going to stand there having an emotional crisis, or are you going to come over here and fuck already so I can watch?”
The absurdity of it broke through the tension. I let out a startled laugh, June’s lips twitching into a smile.
“He has a point,” she said, her hands sliding down to grip my shirt.
“You want to—” I gestured vaguely at the bed where Milo lay injured. “Now?”
“I’m on drugs,” Milo said cheerfully. “Good drugs. And I may be temporarily broken, but my dick works fine. So yeah, I’d like to watch my two favorite people fuck. Preferably before thesepainkillers knock me out again. Wait, you didn’t fuck earlier in the hospital room, did you? I remember fantasizing about it there, too.”
“No, we didn’t.” June was already pulling me toward the bed, her fingers working at the buttons of my shirt. “If Daddy wants a show, we should give him a show.”
“I’m not calling him Daddy.”
