Too much.
“Finn—” Libby came up from the footwell, her eyes going straight to it. Color left her face in a single pass.
“Oh, God—”
“I’m fine,” I said.
“You’re shot,” Fiona said from the backseat, her voice flat and professional. “Is it through and through? Can you tell?”
I tested the shoulder with a controlled movement that cost me significantly more than I let reach my expression. The burning sharpened into something with real edges.
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “But it doesn’t change anything right now.”
“It changes everything right now,” Libby said, her hands already reaching for me, already moving.
“Not yet,” I said, sharper than intended, yet not sharp enough to warrant an apology. “We are not stopping here. Not on this road, not this close to that bridge.”
She froze, her hands hovering, not quite touching. Her jaw tightened; she was clearly biting back several retorts, selecting the most helpful one.
“Okay,” she said, the word delivered with the controlled precision of someone making a deliberate choice. “Keep driving. Just—keep driving and tell me if it gets worse.”
Fiona’s hands reached over the seat, and something pressed hard into my shoulder. The road blurred for a moment before I refocused.
“It’s not going to get worse,” I stated.
She regarded me with the look of someone accepting a chosen lie.
I faced forward and drove.
The blood soaking through my shirt wasn’t going to change a thing until we were safe within four walls.
Thirty Four
On Vacation -Libby
About thirty minutes later, the highway reappeared, a long, straight line cutting through the trees ahead. It looked impossibly, blessedly clear.
I pointed through the windshield. “Finn—we can get back on. The road looks—”
“No.” His voice was rougher now, a ragged edge that told me every word was costing him. “We stay off it.”
I looked at him, really looked, something I’d been trying to avoid for the past several miles. It would only confirm what I already knew.
His jaw held its familiar tightness, but now it seemed to be costing him something.
“We need shelter before dark,” he added, the words slower than they should have been, the spacing slightly off, as if he had to locate each one before he could deliver it. “Not getting caught out in the open when the light goes; our headlights will be like a dinner bell.”
My mouth went dry, as if I’d swallowed a mouthful of dust.
“Finn—”
“I’m fine,” he said preemptively, before I could utter another word.
He wasn’t. The blood had long since soaked through his shirt, tracking down toward his elbow, dripping from his sleeve cuff in a slow, patient rhythm that had no interest in stopping.
“Pull over,” I said, keeping my voice even and direct, giving it no room to be ignored.
Nothing. His eyes stayed on the road, his hands on the wheel—grip loosening, then tightening, then loosening again, the cycle repeating.
