Matthew’s smile was fleeting and tinged with sadness. “Should just let the NCOs have the run of the place.”
“Yeah.”
“His royal pain in my ass go back home?”
“Soon as the Air Force could muster an escort. He would’ve come today if he were still here.”
“Pity. He was a decent fighter, even if he was SAS.”
The teasing dig at Liam almost made Jamie smile. “I’ll tell him you said that.”
Liam and his family had departed the United States for England once they could be securely flown home. Like Jamie, Liam had been caught on a live stream using his electrokinesis. That a member of the British Royal Family was a metahuman was the top story on the other side of the Atlantic. Jamie had a feeling it would be a while before he spoke with Liam again. They both needed to come to terms with living yet another different kind of life.
Matthew returned to his team while Jamie and Katie walked back to theirs. He thought about giving his condolences to Hughes’ widow, but the idea of acknowledging a loss that deep threatened to tear him open from the inside out all over again. So when Katie steered him away from the line of people still talking to the grieving family, Jamie didn’t protest.
The long walk back to where they’d been instructed to leave their vehicles was made in silence. They’d driven to Arlington in two SUVs but left in a convoy of three, following after the director. The drive back to base seemed to take forever due to traffic and security checkpoints, but the director’s status got them through each one with no trouble.
Jamie watched as the MDF headquarters came into view, but rather than head to the main building, the director’s vehicle took the wide road around—to Medical.
Jamie blinked. The SUV had somehow come to a stop in front of the emergency room doors. He’d lost time, just a little, because he had no recollection of the last few minutes of the drive. Katie opened up the side passenger door, looking back at him as she got out. Jamie’s gaze skittered past her to where the emergency room doors were sliding open, allowing Gracie to walk outside and greet them, her white doctor’s coat flapping in the breeze.
He didn’t know how he found the strength to move, but he did. Jamie climbed out of the SUV on his own with shaking hands, only dimly aware of the way his team moved in close.
“Gracie?” Jamie got out in a voice that didn’t sound like his.
She drew closer and he could see the tears on her face, the way the whites of her eyes had become just a little red. Gracie was a gifted surgeon who wasn’t prone to emotional outbursts when delivering news, either good or bad, to a patient’s next of kin. Seeing her cry made Jamie believe the worst had happened, and he went cold all over.
“Please, no,” he whispered.
Jamie’s mind whited out and his knees went weak in a way they never had before, but what was left of his team was there to hold him up. They reached for him and held on tight, ready to carry him the rest of the way when all he wanted to do was fall.
Because Jamie had hoped—in spite of everything that had happened over the last seven days—that Kyle would survive. That maybe, just maybe, the man he wanted to spend the rest of his life with would be there to share it with him.
Except Gracie was crying, and Jamie could feel the scream of denial building in his chest, in his lungs, clawing at his throat with the ferocity of a wild animal.
Gracie reached for him before he could give voice to the black grief blotting out the edges of his vision. Her hands shook, or maybe it was his own. Jamie couldn’t tell the difference, but the tremulous smile on her face throttled the scream at the back of his throat just for a moment.
“Do you remember when I said I wasn’t sure I could bring Kyle back? That I thought he might be too far gone for even my power to save him?” Gracie asked in a hushed voice.
Jamie still couldn’t speak, but he nodded jerkily, thinking back to the brief meeting he’d had with her in Medical the morning after the attack. She’d explained to him that the chances of Kyle surviving the wounds he’d sustained while functionally human were slim. Too much blood loss, too much sustained trauma, and no ability to heal were hurdles even Gracie’s power might not be able to effectively overcome.
When Jamie had asked to see Kyle, Gracie had refused. She had banned everyone from entering the stasis room where Kyle was being treated, no matter how much Jamie had yelled and begged and demanded access to the man he loved. Gracie had held firm, and no one, not even Kyle’s parents, had been allowed to see him this entire week while she and her team worked feverishly to save him.
Waiting hadn’t been easy, and with every day that passed, their hope that Kyle would survive diminished. Each day Jamie woke up alone after pulling the trigger he had wondered if that was the day where Gracie would tell himI’m sorryandI did all I could.
If it was the day he would be planning a funeral instead of a wedding.
Gracie squeezed his hand tightly as she blinked away tears. “We managed to measure active brain activity on the EEG for the first time early this morning when we partially brought Kyle out of stasis. I made the decision at that time to remove him from stasis completely. He’s been responding well to the rest of the treatment all morning, but he’s still in ICU.”
The ringing in his ears sounded like a klaxon, but somehow Jamie found his voice again.
“Kyle is alive?” Jamie asked hoarsely.
Gracie nodded, her words a lifeline he never wanted to let go. “Alive and awake.”
Years later, when people would ask Jamie what his happiest moment was, he’d always think about how he felt right then, standing outside Medical and knowing Kyle had survived. Like he was drowning and flying all at once, a lost soul finding his way home through an impossible raging storm.
21
