My God,I needed them.
Not loved—it was too soon for that. But need. Raw, terrifying need. The kind that made my chest ache when I looked at them.
I didn’t know how to be this vulnerable and survive it.
But every part of me had already decided.
I couldn’t make myself let go.
The fear didn’t fade, and that terrified me more than the bullet ever had.
24
OLIVER
Three days in a hospital chair had done something to my spine that might be permanent.
I shifted, trying to find a position that didn’t make my lower back scream, and gave up. The vinyl squeaked under me. Across the room, Ophelia was curled in the window seat, her phone abandoned beside her, asleep at last. She’d been running on caffeine and stubbornness since the night at the Crucible, and her body had finally overruled her will.
Callen sat in the corner, laptop open, doing whatever it was he did when he wasn’t hovering over Kiernan’s bed. Orchestrating. Arranging. Managing. Which meant he hadn’t slept either. But he kept going, because that’s what you did when the person closest to you was lying in a hospital bed with a hole in his shoulder.
Something else was going on with him too. That first night, a nurse had come to tell him someone was asking for him in the family waiting area. Isla MacLeod. Callen had gone rigid at her name, and when he came back twentyminutes later, he’d been different. Quieter. Whatever had passed between them, it wasn’t my business.
Kiernan was asleep. Or pretending to be. His breathing had a too-even quality that meant he was aware of everything happening around him, noting it, then deciding what to do with it. Even flat on his back with a drain snaking out from under his bandages, he couldn’t stop strategizing.
He lay still in the gray afternoon light, his hand curled around the edge of the blanket like he needed to hold onto something. The pallor of his skin looked wrong against the white sheets.
He hated this. Every second of it. The weakness, the dependency, the indignity of needing help for basic functions. Yesterday, I’d helped him in the loo, and the look on his face had been worse than anything James had done to us in that basement. Not pain. Shame.
I understood it. In his position, I’d feel the same. But understanding didn’t make it easier to watch.
Callen’s mobile chimed. He glanced at the screen, typed something, then looked up and caught me watching.
“Snow.” Callen tilted the screen so I could see.
Three words.Cleanup handled. Recovering?
Callen typed back,Stable. Out of ICU.
The response came in seconds.Good. Tell him to stop getting shot.
Despite everything, I almost laughed. I’d never met Snow—none of us had, not really. He existed as a voice on comms, a presence in briefings, a ghost who passed through the world without leaving traces. But even ghosts, apparently, had opinions about Kiernan’s self-sacrificing tendencies.
Callen pocketed his device. “He made sure there was nothing left at the scene that could cause problems.”
“Problems” meaning evidence of people being present who shouldn’t have been. Damage control.
“I didn’t realize he was involved.”
“Snow’s always involved.” Callen smirked. “He just doesn’t advertise.”
The door opened, and a nurse came in, checked the monitors, and adjusted the IV drip rate. She smiled at me with the sympathy of someone who’d seen too many worried visitors, made notes on her tablet, then left.
When she was gone, Kiernan’s eyes opened.
“You’re talking like I’m not here,” he said. His voice was rough, scraped raw.
“You were asleep,” Callen said.
