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Clay came back into the room with a box in his arms, and I tried to push myself up on the bed.
His hazel eyes narrowed, and he pointed at me with his free hand. “Lay back down before I drug you.”
Every soft thing he’d been putting forward had fallen to the wayside. Apparently, he was too in doctor mode to realize he’d left his mask lying in the parking lot beside those dead bodies.
“Fine.” I made a show of leaning back on the bed, biting down another wince and wave of dizziness when my side screamed at me. “Where did you learn to do that?”
I wasn’t going to drop the questions.
He came to the bed beside me and eyed my sweater before taking a pair of scissors to it. I could have complained that it was expensive, but it had a bullet hole in it, and he’d just watched me drop a ridiculous amount of money buying him clothes.
Also, I wanted the pain to subside so I could concentrate on questioning him.
“Cutting fabric isn’t that hard.” He peeled my sweater back and winced.
I glanced down, my lips pulling back from my teeth in a grimace. It wasn’t the cleanest wound I’d ever had. The bullet had caught me in the side and skimmed along my rib cage. I could see a soft glimpse of white that let me know it tore down to the bone, but I didn’t see any splintering.
And my breath was still blissfully clear of blood.
I’d gotten lucky, though looking at my side torn open so viciously made something dark twist in my stomach, in the back of my mind. A phantom pang somewhere deeper in my chest clawed through my rib cage and made my heartbeat pick up.
But it wasn’t deeper — I was fine.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t bleeding like a bitch.
“Fuck, Jayce. You didn’t have to take a bullet for me.” My eyes turned from the injury and back to Clay — I tracked the way his throat bobbed when he swallowed, the way his eyes were wide and all for the damage I'd taken to protect him.
I tracked the way his fingers were so gentle when they carefully probed around the gash to make sure there weren’t any bone splinters or bullet fragments before he opened his kit.
“It’s not that bad.” I didn’t look at him when I said it, which probably saved me the heat of his glower. As though to prove his point, Clay upended a bottle of something that drew a vicious hiss from between my teeth, then followed it up with a needle piercing my ribs — it burned in streaks of fire all along my side. My entire body tensed with the need to recoil or lash out, but I kept myself still on the bed. The wave of pain made my head spin, and the fresh wash of blood the sting seemed to bring made my vision go hazy at the edges again.
It made Clay look like he was bathed in light — haloed like an angel.
“Fuck, that’s how you look sometimes when I dream of you.” The words slipped unbidden from my lips, and the arm on my good side rose to twirl one of his curls around my finger. “So fucking pretty.”
He stilled beneath my touch, his hands halfway to the medical kit again.
“You dream about me?”
“All the time. My whole life.” The words came out unfiltered. I could blame it on blood loss, the pain slowly working me numb, or whatever medication he’d injected me with making me fly. The truth was, he was so close, and so warm, and there was something in his eyes when I told him that made it feel right.
Clay searched my face for a brief moment, then turned his gaze back to the wound. I felt the slip of a needle going into my skin — of course he had to stitch it up. When I winced, he paused.
“I’m sorry. Talk to me.” He carefully continued to work, but his voice was husky when he spoke. “What do you dream about?”
“You. You’re different every time. Sometimes you’re like this — sometimes you’re like you were in the parking lot. Dangerous, mean. But sometimes…” My fingers carded through his hair again, and he didn’t move to shake me off. “Sometimes you’re softer. You’re in my arms, and all I want to do is keep you safe.” I swallowed, remembering how those dreams turned out. “Sometimes, I dream that you die in my arms, but sometimes I’m the one who dies in yours.”
I glanced down at the wound on my side, at his hands touching it, and winced. It sent a shockwave of emotion through me that had nothing to do with him and everything to do with a situation that only existed in my head. I still reached down and grabbed his wrist lightly as he cut the thread of his stitching and put the knife on the bedside table.
“Jayce,” Clay’s voice was soft as he froze beneath my touch. “I think I proved I can keep myself safe.” He said it, but there was something in his eyes. I didn’t know if it was guilt that I’d gotten shot proving that claim wrong, or if he’d had the same dreams I did.
Did he remember what it felt like to slide a knife into my side?
Did he remember the warmth of a dozen first kisses?
Did he remember what I was almost positive were lives we'd lived before?
I released his wrist and skimmed my fingers slowly up his arm — he stilled beneath me, but his breath caught in a hitch when I tickled along his neck and cupped his cheek.
