I don't argue. He's right. But he said he loved me, and the last man who said that spent four months seeing my damage before deciding it cost more than I was worth. Finn hasn't hit that wall yet. He will. Everyone does.
The walls go back up—not all the way, not like before, but enough to get me through the next twelve hours. Enough to keep the part of me that believes him locked in a room where it can't do any damage.
I stand and pull the henley down over my hips, and head for the trauma bay.
His voice follows me down the hall, quiet and certain and impossible to outrun.
"I'll be right here, Jess. I'm not going anywhere."
I don't turn around. But my hand presses flat against my chest where his heartbeat still echoes, and I hold it there all the way to the door.
Chapter 6
Finn
This doesn't change anything.
The biggest lie she's told me. And Jess has told me some good ones.
I watch her from the doorway while I button the flannel I dug out of my bag. She adjusts Dean's IV drip without looking up, her fingers quick and sure, the henley—my henley—still loose around her hips. My scent mixed with hers, sunk into her pores, woven through her hair. Every breath I take in this corridor fills my lungs with proof.
She knows I'm here. She doesn't turn.
Outside, the second half of the hurricane throws itself against the clinic walls, and the plywood groans under the pressure.
Jess crosses the trauma bay to check Linda's splint. I step in to swap the empty saline bag hanging beside Dean's bed, and our arms brush. The contact lasts a fraction of a second—her elbow grazing my forearm, bare skin on bare skin.She doesn't pull back. Not the way she would have yesterday. Her hand hoversnear mine for a breath before she moves to the next monitor, and her scent carries a warmth she's stopped trying to bury.
I let the moment pass without pushing. Jess isn't a woman you corner. She's a woman who comes to you or she doesn't, and whatever opened between us on that cot is still too new and too fragile for me to grab with both hands, no matter how badly I want to.
The restraint costs me more than bleeding would.
A crash from the west wing splits the air. Jess goes rigid beside me, her hands locking at her sides, and for one second the acrid spike of fear cuts through her scent. Then she shakes her head once, hard, and runs toward the noise. I'm right behind her.
Water pours through a fissure in the ceiling tiles where the roof buckled, flooding the hallway and pooling around the supply shelf. Rain hammers through the gap in sheets, drenching the linens, the backup blankets, two cases of bottled water we stacked against the wall twelve hours ago.
"We need to move the patients." Jess grabs a stack of dry sheets from the shelf and shoves them into my arms. "Dean first. He can't move on his own if this gets worse."
I nod. We work fast and silent, transferring Dean on his backboard to the east corridor, Linda limping beside us on her good leg while I steady her with one arm and brace Dean's boardwith the other. Their kid Mike carries the lantern ahead of us, casting a wobbly circle of light across the flooded floor.
On the second trip, hauling the last of the salvageable supplies from the west wing, Jess's boot catches a patch of standing water. Her feet go out from under her and I have her before she hits the ground, my arms locking around her waist, her back against my chest.
Her body pressed flat against mine, her ribcage expanding under my hands, the back of her head against my collarbone. Her scent floods me. Arousal and fear tangled together, a combination that sends every orc instinct I own into freefall, and for one held second the storm disappears, the clinic disappears, and the only thing left in the world is the place where her spine meets my body.
A section of gutter rips free outside and slams against the building. The sound cracks through the wall like a gunshot. Jess flinches, pushes off me, and keeps moving.
The front door blows open twenty minutes later.
Two brothers from the club—Colt and a prospect named Dawson—stumble through the entrance carrying a body between them. Soaked through, wind-shredded, covered in blood and plaster dust, they lower their cargo onto the treatment table and Colt seizes my arm, his hand trembling.
"Building came down on him. Jax and Dawson were pulling a family out of a collapsed apartment on Birch Street. The second floor pancaked."Colt's grip tightens. His voice drops. "Also—those crates Knox warned about? Showed up at the gate before the storm hit. Nobody touched them yet. They're still sitting out there."
My stomach drops. Father'sgifts. Sitting at the clubhouse gate in the rain. I shove it down—lock it behind whatever door I keep the clan shit behind—because Jax is gray on the table and there's no room for orc politics in this room right now.
Jax Steele lies on the table, gray-faced, breathing in shallow hitches that rattle through his lungs. The wolf shifter prospect—twenty-eight, lean, scrappy, the kid who stayed late at the garage every night teaching himself to bleed brake lines because he wanted to prove he belonged. Blood soaks through his shirt from half a dozen lacerations, and his left side bows inward at an angle that turns my stomach.
Jess rounds the gurney and her hands move across Jax's torso, palpating ribs, checking his airway, tilting his chin to read his pupils.
"Broken ribs, at least four." Her voice drops. "Probable internal bleeding. I need light, pressure bandages, and whatever clotting agent we have left."
