Johnny shrugged again. “Sure. No worries. I’ll just go back to sniffing your dirty underwear.”
“You better be fucking joking.”
Johnny hummed, wiggling his injured fingers. “Someone’s gotta tell you to start upping your fibre intake.”
“You filthy bastard.”
A sleepy smile split Johnny’s cheeks. “Made you laugh though, didn’t it?”
“I’m meant to be cheeringyouup.”
Johnny squeezed his hand. “You are.”
Taylor stared up at the bright blue curtain, counting all the rings that hooked it to the rail. It surprised him how easily they were talking about feelings. Johnny’s feelings. His deeper-than-best-friendship feelings. Taylor had done his best to not think about it, trying to convince himself that Johnny didn’t mean it, or that it was still a side effect of all the biting.
However, after everything that had happened, he found he didn’t have the energy to worry anymore. Not when Johnny was right there, alive, smelling like home. Because for the first time in Taylor’s life, he’d actually thought he might lose him. That he might be made to live with a John-Paul-shaped hole in his heart.
That was no life, no life at all.
“Was Manders one of the people that attacked you?” Taylor eventually asked.
Johnny shook his head.
“Shame. Would have loved to lock him up again.”
“I know. Have you heard from Kat?”
Taylor rubbed the back of his neck. “She wouldn’t tell me anything anyway. She knows our history.”
They sat for a while, Taylor pilfering a copy ofCosmofrom the nurses’ station so Johnny could do the crossword whilst Taylor aimlessly scrolled through his phone. He raised his eyebrows when he came across an article that read ‘OMEGA RIGHTS CAMPAIGN REACHES PARLIAMENT.’
He nudged Johnny’s elbow. “Looks like something’s happening with that petition.”
He showed Johnny the screen. There was a huge group of people standing outside Downing Street, someone at the front was gripping a clipboard, and another holding a white envelope in the air.
“Good for them,” Johnny said, tapping his pen against the magazine.
Taylor scrolled through the article, flinching when further down the page were headshots of Maya, Sal, Leo and Reuben. Sam’s killers. They were all wearing the grey uniform of West Newton custody block, meaning the photographs must have been from the night they were arrested.
Sally, Leo and Reuben all looked scared as hell, but Maya was just… smiling.
“I hate her,” Taylor said, clenching his teeth. “I fucking hate her, JP.”
Johnny put the magazine down and stared at the pictures with him. “I know.”
“How the fuck can they be so cold blooded? Just killing four alphas like it was nothing? Sammy, she—” Taylor looked up atthe ceiling, blinking several times before returning his gaze to the picture of Maya. “She doesn’t need to look so fucking pleased about it, you know? Like she did the world a favour.”
Johnny took the phone off him. “I know, but we got them, didn’t we? Pember, Blake, Isla—they’re the reason they’re in prison.”
Taylor snorted, rocking forwards in the uncomfortable chair. “I know, but it doesn’t feel like enough. I want them to fucking suffer for what they did, not be treated like heroes. I can’t just let it go, JP. I can’t—” He pressed the heels of his palms into his eye sockets, the stress of the day finally catching up to him. He bit his lip as it began to quiver.
Johnny’s hand came up to rest on the nape of his neck, and he pulled him down until their foreheads were touching. “I know you’re still angry, Tay. I am too, but I look at Marty and… What if something like that happened to him? Forced bonding, a pregnancy he couldn’t terminate, raped for being alone in the wrong place at the wrong time, for fuck’s sake?”
Taylor’s lip twitched. “That will never happen.”
“But what if it did?”
“Then we’d hunt them down, wouldn’t we? We’d skin them from arse to… Oh.”
