Miles lifted a brow. “The one taking up half your face.”
I reached up and hissed when my fingers brushed my cheek. Heat. Swelling. Right. Reese’s gun.
“It’s nothing.”
Hawk gave me a look that said he’d let me get away with a lot, but not that. “Med. Now.”
Aaron jerked his head toward the corridor. “Go. I’ll deal with Command.”
We stepped away from them, moving down the hall. My legs felt strangely weightless—like I might drift up and away if I didn’t focus on each step.
“You okay?” Hawk asked quietly.
“No.”
He nodded once. “Me neither.”
It shouldn’t have made me feel better.
It did.
The makeshift infirmarywas set up in a side room that smelled like antiseptic and exhaustion. A young medic in fatigues checked my pupils, prodded my cheekbone, and made a sympathetic noise.
“Good news—nothing fractured,” she said. “Just a nasty contusion. You’ll look like you lost a bar fight for a few days.”
“How about if I say I won?” I asked.
Hawk made a sound suspiciously close to a laugh.
The medic smiled faintly. “From what I heard, yeah. Try some ice when you can. I’ll send you home with anti-inflammatories.”
Hawk had a cut above his eyebrow and bruises blooming along his ribs where Reese’s hits had landed. The medic cleaned and taped the cut, then shot him the same measuring look she’d given me.
“You two look like hell.”
“Feels accurate,” Hawk said.
She stepped back. “You’re cleared, for now. They’ll want a more thorough look once you’re back at base.”
Then I looked at Hawk and felt the rest of it barreling in behind.
He caught my gaze. “What?”
“D.C.,” I said. “You really have to go?”
His eyes didn’t flinch, but the muscle in his cheek ticked. “Yeah.”
“For how long?”
“Don’t know yet.”
The answer I hated.
Non-answers had killed more relationships than truth ever did.
The medic moved on to another patient, leaving us in a bubble of dim light and beeping monitors.
I stared at the tape on his brow. “Last time you left like that…”
