I lift my hand. Slowly. Bleeding through. Empty.
I put it on her throat.
Not to push. Not to grip. To rest.
To tell her I could have ended this and chose not to.
She does not shoot.
Her pulse moves under my fingers, faster than her expression is letting on.
But her face gives me nothing.
I do not press.
I let her have the choice.
Her finger eases on the trigger.
She holsters the gun at the base of her spine without taking her eyes off me.
"Hold still," she says.
She does not wait for me. She is already moving. Charcoal jacket coming off her shoulders in one motion. Folded once down the long way. Then again. Fast hands working without looking.
She crosses to me.
She does not ask. She does not warn me. She wraps the jacket around my waist, tight against the wound. Ties the sleeves once. Twice. Hard enough to make the pain announce itself in a new register.
Her hands are on me. Not to pin. Not to fight. Just holding me together.
She presses the jacket harder against the wound.
Her eyes flick once to the blood on her hands.
She has already calculated how bad this is.
The fact that she is still moving fast tells me the number is ugly.
She does not look at my face.
I look at hers.
She is not breathing right. Shallow at the top of the chest. Her shoulders not moving.
The jacket smells like her.
Warm vanilla. The kind that lives on skin instead of out of a bottle.
I make a note of it. The way a cop does.
I should not be making notes of her.
She finishes the knot.
She pulls back.
"Move," she says.
