Page 21

"I'm here. I'm here."

I found his hand and gripped it, squeezed it until he grunted. Breathe in for four, hold it for seven, exhale for eight. "Talk to me."

"Okay. So, um, let’s see…my dad is the second oldest of eight brothers. You met him. My mom is Mara. I'm the oldest of three boys—my brothers are Marco and Isaac. Marco is a hockey god. He's a junior, and he’s already got half a dozen D-1 full-ride offers, but we've also seen pro scouts at his games, and I’ve got a feeling he’s gonna skip college and go straight to the NHL. Isaac is seven years younger than me, so he's only fourteen. He's a good kid, just a little addicted to YouTube shorts and Pokémon."

"Puh…Pokémon?" I stammered. "Really?"

"Oh yeah, it's a big thing. I don't think it ever really went away, but it's bigger than ever right now." I felt a gentle touch to my forehead, his fingers on my cheek turning my head to one side as he spoke. "Pretty deep cut here. We should see if there's a first aid kit anywhere."

"In b-ba-back,” I stammered. “Com—compartment buh…b-behind the b-bench.” I snarled wordlessly like a cornered wildcat, angry at my own weakness. I tried again, no stammering. “There’s a first aid kit in a compartment behind the rear bench seat.”

I heard his restraints thunk as he released them, felt him move, felt his absence from beside me, and somewhere under the panic I registered a faint but definite sense of unease at his absence at my side. "Got it." A pause. "It's marginally less fucked back here. Can you move?"

I nodded, but that hurt; it made my head swim. “Yeah. I think." I released my own harness and twisted carefully to crawl into the back. My feet crunched on glass. Each movement made my head swim and throb.

Maybe my concussion was worse than I thought.

Jax's face was a mask of drying crimson, smeared away a bit around his eyes and mouth; he was still trickling blood from the cut on his forehead.

He had a first kit open, and as I settled into the jump seat behind the pilot’s seat, there were three seats abreast facing front and one each behind the pilot and copilot seats, facing the rear, with a narrow pass-through to the cockpit. The windows were shattered, and the doors crumpled, glass on the floor here, too.

He used a wet wipe to clean my face, his touch exquisitely gentle, and then he used a butterfly bandage to close the cut. “You probably oughta have a couple stitches, but that’s the best I can do with no medical training and the supplies on hand."

“Thanks," I muttered. "Here. Let me help you."

I slid across to the bench beside him and busied myself cleaning his face and bandaging his cut.

While I worked, he spoke. "Uncle Bast is the oldest of my uncles. His real name is Sebastian, but literally no one calls him that."

"Not even your mom?" I asked.

"Nope. Only once that I remember. I was like ten? Eleven? He did or said something monumentally stupid that really, really pissed my mom off. I don't remember what, if I ever knew. I just remember her screeching his full name at the top of her lungs. Other than that, no, everyone calls him Bast."

"Weird nickname."

"Comes from my Uncle Xavier. He couldn't say Sebastian when he was little, so he called him Bast, and it just stuck." I finished applying the butterfly bandage; he probed it gingerly. "Thanks."

“Yeah."

Jax set the kit aside and stretched out his long legs. "Best if we just stay in here tonight, yeah? Too dark to collect wood for a fire."

“Yeah," I whispered again. "Fine."

I was breathing a little easier, but now that the busywork was done, the panic was trying to take over again.

I don't know if he knew, but Jax kept talking, keeping me grounded with the low, smooth murmur of his voice.

"Uncle Bast and Aunt Dru have four kids. Delia, Duncan, Dane, and…" he paused here, for some reason, and his voice seemed to catch. "And Sunni. Emerson. We call her Sunni. She’s… they adopted her. Or she adopted them. Delia's best friend since kindergarten. She lived with them most of her life because her home life was wildly fucked."

I forced my eyes to open, to focus on Jax, and I saw distance in his eyes—something else. Pain? Regret? I couldn’t quite tell.

He was silent a moment or two, and then continued. "So there's Uncle Bast, then my dad, then Brock, the stunt pilot. He's married to Aunt Claire, and they have two kids, both adopted because Aunt Claire can't have kids. Nina and Nolan. Then there's Uncle Bax and Aunt Eva—Evangline."

His voice washed over me like bath-warm waves. I tuned out and just let the sound of his voice soothe me. I'd have to examine why it soothed me later, when I had the headspace for such things. Right now, it was winning the war against my panic doom-spiral, and that's all I cared about.

“…Underground fighting, but once he met Aunt Eva, that kinda stopped. Now he's a professional MMA and strength-and-conditioning coach. Fighters and athletes come from all over the world to train with him. He's a badass." A shiver rippled through me, and he stopped. "You cold?"

I nodded. "I…I get cold after panic attacks."