“I am. I am.”
Then he’s right back to her, one hand rubbing hard over her arm, over her shoulder, over anything he can touch.
“Lia,” he says, and his voice breaks fully this time. “Lia, sweetheart, I need you to stay with me. I need you to hear me.”
Elijah’s hand tightens on the wheel again.
“She hears you,” he says, and there’s something in the words that isn’t calm, isn’t reassurance, just command, as if he can force that into being true too. “Keep talking.”
I look back down at my hands.
The blood is still pushing through.
Not as fast.
Maybe.
Or maybe that’s wishful thinking.
I shift the pressure again, using the heel of my palm this time instead of the whole hand, trying to be more direct, more deliberate, and the second I do, her body gives a faint jerk beneath my grip.
It isn’t much.
Barely anything.
But it’s enough.
“Lia?” Jackson says sharply, seizing on it instantly. “sweetheart?”
Her mouth parts slightly.
No sound comes out.
But I saw it.
I know I did.
“She moved,” Jackson says, half-laughing, half-sobbing at once. “She moved...Lia, do that again, come on—”
“Don’t make her work,” I say, because hope is dangerous when it gets too loud. “Just keep her awake if you can.”
If you can.
I hate the phrase the second it leaves me, but there’s no taking it back.
Jackson hears it too.
His face tightens.
Behind the wheel, Elijah goes even stiller than before, and that is somehow worse than if he’d shouted.
“She’s staying with us,” he says, and he doesn’t raise his voice, but every word in it lands like iron. “She is not slipping away in this fucking car.”
My hands tighten over the wound again.
I don’t tell him she isn’t really awake now. I don’t tell him I’m not sure what that movement meant. I don’t tell him that every minute on this road feels like a minute too long.
I just keep pressing.
