“Oh my goodness,” she whispers. “Finn…”
I catch her face in both hands, careful and firm, forcing her to look at me.
“Hey. Look at me.”
She does, barely.
Her lashes are wet. Her mouth is trembling. She looks wrecked, and that somehow hurts worse than the knife did.
“You don’t do that,” I say.
She blinks. “What?”
“That.” I hold her there, eye to eye. “That thing you’re doing right now where this becomes your fault.”
Her face crumples even more. “You got hurt because of me?—”
“No,” I snap, and now there’s no humor left in it at all. “Don’t you dare think you aren’t worth this.”
I can feel my own pulse pounding against the pain in my side, can feel blood moving warm and sticky under my shirt, can feel every old instinct in me trying to shrug this off and keep things light and easy and disposable.
I’m done with that for this.
“For the record,” I say, “this?” I glance down at the mess, then back at her. “This is on them. Not you. You hear me?”
Zane appears at my shoulder, which is honestly a relief because I’m starting to get that floaty, slightly detached feeling that suggests blood loss, and I would prefer not to pass out in front of everyone. Terrible for the brand.
“Let me look,” he says.
I sigh dramatically because dignity matters. “Can I at least complain first?”
“No.”
“Wow. Hostile.”
He lifts my shirt anyway.
His expression goes flat in that way it does when he’s trying not to say something alarming in front of Aurora.
Ryder cuts in from near the door. “How bad?”
Zane presses a hand to the cut. White pain flashes through me so bright my vision stutters.
I hiss. “Okay. That stung a little.”
“It’ll keep,” Zane says, which in Zane speak means ‘not currently dying’.
Fantastic.
Aurora reaches for me again, then stops. She’s afraid that touching me will make it worse. That almost wrecks me all by itself.
I catch her wrist and pull her hand back onto my arm.
“There,” I murmur. “That’s legal. You can touch me.”
A wet laugh escapes her, half sob, half disbelief.
Good. I’ll take it.
