“Yeah,” I agreed. “Huck wants us somewhere safe after this. With the three options being a hotel, Teddy’s condo, or—”
“My friends,” Zayn’s voice filled the room, making Ama jump and Noa stiffen.
I swiveled in the chair, finding him standing there with a big bouquet of flowers, despite there being no way a florist was open at this time of night. Or, morning, I guess, now.
“I am sorry to hear you are injured,” he said. “I brought flowers.”
“If I smell those, am I going to pass out and wake up on some mountain being hunted by billionaires for sport?”
Zayn’s lips quirked at that.
“I’m afraid they are just normal flowers. But I can acquire any drugs you wish.”
“I didn’t hear that,” Ama said, shaking her head. “Okay. Just going to wrap these up, then we can get you to X-ray.”
Zayn walked in to place the flowers on the counter.
He couldn’t have been getting much more sleep than the rest of us, but he looked fully awake, his black suit crisp, his slight beard carefully shaped.
“How the fuck do you look so put together?” I asked, unable to help myself.
“Money,” he said with a shrug and a wicked glint in his eye.
“Okay. I’m going to take Noa to X-Ray. Why don’t you hop up on the table so I can do your feet when I get back?” she suggested before going to grab a wheelchair and helping Noa onto it. “We’ll be right back.”
I did as I was told, then kicked off my shoes, feeling better without the pressure on the cuts.
“Run through the woods?”
“Yeah.”
“You know it’s better to wear shoes when you do that,” Zayn said, dropping down onto the rolling chair I’d vacated.
“Next time I’m not being chased by an armed man, I’ll keep that in mind. The fuck are you doing?” I asked when he scooted over, grabbed gloves, then rolled toward me.
“Fixing your feet.”
“The fuck you are.” But he was already reaching for the wash basin and bottle of saline.
“You know, it would be difficult to engage in all that primal play of yours when you lose your feet to infection,” he said.
“You’re not a doctor.”
“Am I not?”
“Wait… are you?”
I mean… none of us knew shit about Zayn. Whoever he was before he became an international arms dealer had been completely scrubbed. He basically didn’t exist until he showed up in scuttlebutt about the arms trade.
“I worked as a medic,” he clarified as he reached for a tweezer and yanked something that felt like a fucking tree branch out of one of the cuts.
“Noa got a local,” I said as I tried to take deep breaths as he dug around in the cuts with the tweezer.
“I’ve dug bullets out of boys younger than your brother over there without any drugs,” he said, tone emptier than usual. “You can handle a few leaves and thorns being pulled out.”
He wasn’t wrong.
So I just shut up and let him work.
