"Guess we're in this together." I keep my voice light. Easy.
She has no idea how much that sentence costs me.
Chapter 3
Jess
The generator kicks on at eight-fourteen, and the clinic contracts to a handful of rooms lit by battery lanterns and the green pulse of monitors I can't afford to lose.
I count the glow points from the break room doorway. Two lanterns in the trauma bay. One in the supply closet. One on the counter beside the emergency radio, its red power light blinking in a steady rhythm that reminds me of a heartbeat on a monitor. Four points of light in a building designed for fluorescents and daylight, and outside the plywood-covered windows, the hurricane screams like it wants in.
Finn drops two cots from the storage closet onto the break room floor. They land side by side with a metallic clatter, narrow as stretchers, separated by a path barely wide enough to walk through. The vending machine in the corner glows blue-white, the only thing in the room running on generator power, and it casts Finn in cold light as he unfolds the legs and locks them into place.
"Cozy," he says.
I grab the second cot and drag it two feet further from the first. "Don't push it."
He grins. It fades when he reaches for the cot frame and I see the blood.
A gash splits the meat of his right palm, deep enough to see the darker green of tissue underneath. He must have caught it on a nail or a screw edge while boarding the windows, and instead of saying anything, he's been hauling generators and carrying supplies with his hand bleeding.
"Sit down." The first aid kit comes off the shelf above the microwave. "Let me see."
"It's nothing."
"Sit. Down. Now, Finn."
He drops onto the cot. The frame groans under his weight, the canvas sagging, and he extends his hand with the cut facing up. The lantern slides closer when I drag it across the counter, I kneel on the linoleum, his wrist braced against my knee, and the size difference hits me the way it does every time I get this close. My fingers look small enough to disappear inside his palm. I could press both my hands flat inside one of his and still have green skin showing at the edges.
The antiseptic cap twists off with a snap, I tear a gauze strip. He tenses when the solution hits the wound, but he doesn't flinch.
"You don't have to do this."
"It'll get infected if I don't." I keep my eyes on the cut, dabbing the edges clean. The gash needs butterfly strips, not sutures. His skin runs too thick for standard needles, and I'd need the large-gauge kit from the trauma bay.
"That's not what I meant."
I look up. His face is closer than I expect. Close enough that I can see the pale edge of his broken tusk, the shadow his braid throws across his shoulder, the way the lantern light turns his amber eyes almost gold. He's not focused on the wound. He's focused on me.
"What did you mean?"
"You don't have to take care of me." His voice drops, all the charm scraped out of it. "You don't have to be nice to me, Jess. I know you don't like me."
My fingers go still on his palm. The antiseptic pad sits pressed against his skin, forgotten.
"I never said that."
"You don't have to." He holds my gaze. "You've been avoiding me for weeks."
The backing peels off a butterfly strip with a soft rip, and I press it across the wound. My knuckles leave a faint smear of his blood on my own wrist. "I've been busy."
"Liar."
A second strip goes down. "You don't know me well enough to call me that."
"I know you changed shifts twice to avoid the Sunday dinners at the clubhouse. I know you left Sarah's barbecue before the burgers hit the grill. I know you walked out of Crabby Bill's last Thursday the second my bike pulled into the lot." He pauses. "I pay attention, Jess. Even when you wish I wouldn't."
The break room shrinks. The wind shrieks against the plywood, and the generator's hum vibrates through the floor under my knees, and his hand sits in mine like an anchor holding me in place.
