She's starting to believe me. I can see it in the way she doesn't square her shoulders, doesn't lock her jaw, doesn't reach for the armor she's worn every minute since that cot. I'm just a man with a hole in his arm and her tears on his shirt—she's starting to believe he's real.
The hope between my ribs cuts so deep I can't breathe around it.And underneath the hope, a terror I won't name—because if she believes me and I let her down, there won't be a wall thick enough to get her back.
Chapter 7
Jess
Jax's monitor holds its rhythm, and I stop holding my breath.
His color improved an hour ago, the gray leaching out of his face as life crept back in. Finn's orc blood runs through his veins, stitching together whatever the collapsed building tore apart, and the shifter healing does the rest. His vitals climb in small, stubborn increments: heart rate, oxygen saturation, blood pressure. Each number a middle finger to the storm that tried to kill him.
I check the sutures one last time. They hold tight and clean. Colt and Dawson sleep in the waiting area, their breathing heavy and slow. Linda dozes in the recliner with Mike curled against her good side, and Dean's spinal board rests stable in the east corridor.
No emergencies for the first time in hours.
I don't know what to do with that.
My hands find the edge of the counter and grip it. The adrenaline that carried me through Jax's cardiac arrest drained out an hour ago, and what replaced it sits heavy in my chest,a bone-deep exhaustion I recognize from field hospitals in Helmand. Thirty-six-hour shifts where the only thing keeping me vertical ran on caffeine and spite.
The building shudders. Wind screams across the roof and the plywood groans against the screws. The storm's second half hit harder than the first. Every gust shakes the structure, and the generator sputters twice before catching, the lights flickering in and out like a pulse that can't decide whether to quit.
I push off the counter and walk to the break room.
Finn sits on the edge of the cot, rolling the sleeve down over the puncture wound in his arm. He gave a pint of blood to Jax and then ripped the needle out to catch me when my knees gave, and he hasn't complained once. Hasn't mentioned the lightheadedness I know he's feeling, the way his hands trembled. He sat back down and stayed quiet while I worked, and when I asked if he needed water, he said, "I'm fine, Kitten. Worry about the kid."
He looks up when I stop in the doorway.
"Jax?"
"Stable. Sleeping."
"Good." He exhales. "That's good."
I step inside and let the door swing shut behind me. The break room shrinks to the two cots, the vending machine, and the man sitting three feet from me with my tears still dried into his shirt.
The generator dies again.
Total darkness. The vending machine's hum cuts out, the emergency lights go black, and the clinic drops into a silence so complete I hear the blood rushing through my ears. My handreaches for the backup lantern on the shelf. My fingers close around warm skin instead.
His forearm. Solid and steady under my palm, the muscle taut beneath the rolled flannel sleeve.
"Are you okay?" His voice, low and close in the dark.
"No." The word falls out before I can catch it. "I'm not okay."
He doesn't ask why. Doesn't push. His hand turns, his fingers threading through mine, and he guides me down onto the cot beside him.
His body heat rolls off him in waves. His scent fills the space between us, I stopped pretending I don't notice it around hour six of this hurricane. Stopped pretending it doesn't ground me somewhere around the moment his blood drained into a bag to save Jax.
"Why me?" The question I've carried for eight months slips out thin and raw, stripped of the armor I'd normally wrap around it.
He doesn't answer right away. His thumb traces a slow circle on the back of my hand, his breathing steady beside me, and the silence stretches long enough that I think he might not answer at all.
"You want the truth?"
"Of course, I want the truth."
"The day Sarah introduced us." His voice drops to quiet and unguarded. "You shook my hand and looked me right in the eye. Not at my tusks. Not at my cut. At me."
