The bed nearest my station is vacated before I even ask. The guy there mutters something about needing the bathroom and takes his IV pole with him like he suddenly remembers another place to be. Smart man.
“Clear the room,” I say calmly, and they obey without question. That still does something to my chest. The authority. The trust. The fact that nobody argues when I use that tone anymore.
Jon sits.
Too relaxed. Too composed. Too deliberately casual.
I take his hand gently, turning it under the light to examine the cut. His skin is warm. His fingers flex once against mine, then go still. It’s clean. Not deep. Not dangerous.
“You could’ve put a bandage on this yourself,” I murmur.
“I could’ve.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
He meets my eyes.
Because he wanted me alone.
The answer sits there between us, heavy and unspoken, settling into the space between my ribs like heat.
I clean the cut slowly, more aware of his skin beneath my fingers than I have any right to be. Alcohol swabs. Sterile gauze.Ointment. My movements are precise because if they aren’t, I’ll start paying too much attention to the shape of his hand, the roughness of his palm, the way his pulse kicks once when my thumb brushes too near his wrist.
He doesn’t flinch, tease, or make a comment.
He just watches me.
The med bay noise fades behind us. Not completely, but enough. Voices become blur. Monitor beeps turn distant. The fluorescent light feels less clinical and more intimate than it should.
“What’s really going on?” I ask quietly.
He exhales through his nose, slow and controlled. “I needed five minutes.”
“From what?”
“Everything.”
The words aren’t loud, but they carry weight.
King is gone. Mikhail is gone. My father is still simmering somewhere between fury and reluctant acceptance. The base is restless, pretending victory tastes sweet when it actually tastes unfinished. There’s new intel. New names. New threats. There is always another fire waiting for him when the smoke from the last one hasn’t even cleared.
Jon looks tired.
Not the sleepless kind but the burdened kind. The kind that settles in men who don’t know how to put anything down, even when it’s cutting grooves into their hands.
“You retiring yourself too?” I ask lightly.
A ghost of a smile touches his mouth. “Not yet.”
I finish wrapping his knuckles, fingers brushing his palm in a way that is entirely unprofessional and a little too deliberate to be accidental. The bandage is neat. Efficient. More care than the injury deserves. Less than the man under it probably does.
He turns his hand slightly, trapping my fingers for a second longer than necessary.
“You’re different,” he says softly.
The words lift my gaze back to his face. “Better or worse?”
“Stronger.”
