“Something like that,” I say quickly.
He looks at me. “You two have never been able to lie—not to me or to each other—so why start now? Aren’t you both too old for this shit? I sure am. Spill it.”
“Well…” I start and look at Jax but he is just gulping his poisons.
“My leg recovered a bit too quickly.”
“How quickly?” O asks.
“Few days, and I had surgery and…”
He stops, straightens and looks at Jax. “You didn’t,” he sneers.
“I had to.”
“You absolutely did not,” O snaps. “You—” He cuts himself off then points at Jax like he’s trying not to throw something. “You don’t use it for that.”
“I wasn’t going to let her limp for the rest of her life.”
“You don’t get to decide that,” O fires back. “You don’t get to spend it like it’s yours.”
I step forward. “He was just helping me, like he helps the others…”
The second the words leave my mouth, I know I’ve gone too far.
“The others?” O barely gets it out.
Jax reaches for the glass timer on the counter.
“Don’t touch that,” O barks.
Jax freezes mid-reach. O steps in, physically blocking him. “You don’t touch anything in this room right now. Not until I say so.”
Jax’s hands curl into fists. “You’re acting like I killed someone. Which, by the way, fucking happened too.”
My stomach turns.
O lowers himself into the creaking chair behind the workbench like all the anger suddenly weighed too much to hold standing. “How did you fix her?” he asks, voice quieter now. “Did you bargain? Talk to it?”
Jax suddenly looks uncomfortable. “I?—”
O’s eyes narrow. “For fuck’s sake, don’t tell me it was during sex.”
“No!” Jax snaps, too fast.
Heat floods my face anyway.
O gestures impatiently. “Then what?”
Jax exhales, annoyed, “I spit in her mouth.”
My jaw drops. Across from me, O’s does too. And suddenly it clicks. That wasn’t foreplay, or at least not just foreplay. “So that’s what that was,” I mumble.
O drags both hands down his face. “Fucking hell, you two.” O looks back at Jax, deadly serious again. “Have you… ever done that before?”
“What?”
“Healed people,” O snaps. “With your—whatever the hell this is. Body fluids.”
