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Sniffles.
I whipped around, finding Jules hunched forward, the backs of her hands to her face instead of her injured palms, body quaking.
“I can’t do this anymore,” she cried, and it seemed that only I could tell it was fake as I rushed over to her, putting an arm around her waist, pulling her toward me.
“Do you guys have enough? She needs to rest,” I told them.”
“Yeah,” the main detective agreed, nodding. “I think we have enough to go on. Here’s my card. Please have her call us if she remembers anything else.”
A few minutes later, the cops were gone, and I was leading Jules to the elevator.
“I hope he pays for this,” the security guard called as we moved inside.
“He will,” I promised as the doors closed. “Okay,” I told her as we got in the room, feeling her take a relieved breath. “I know you want to get clean, but we need to deal with these hands. And maybe the back of your head, okay?”
She swallowed hard at that. “Okay.”
“I just need to see what I can find to try to get…”
“There are tweezers in my purse,” she declared. “And a small first aid kit.”
“Okay. Go on and rinse with some warm water and soap. I will be right in.”
“Give me something, Jules,” I demanded fifteen minutes later, angling her hand around at the light to make sure I got all the gnarly, thick splinters.
“Something what?” she asked, voice hollow.
“I don’t know, honey. Just something. You’re full on automaton right now.”
“I’m so dirty,” she declared, voice desperate, but also a bit self-deprecating, enough so to make me let out a chuckle.
“Well, that is one thing we can fix,” I told her, standing to turn on the shower. “Clean up. But don’t scrub your head. The cuts won’t need stitches, but you won’t want to be rubbing your fingers in open wounds.”
“I have nothing to wear,” she told me as I moved around, getting towels and washcloths.
“I will grab you a shirt. I have a few packed. Are you hungry? Want me to try to order up? Or in if the kitchen is closed?”
“You know what I want?” she asked as I came back in the room, finding tufts of steam heavy in the air already.
“No, what?”
“Hot chocolate,” she declared with a wobbly sort of smile, one I never would have imagined she could have, but did.
I smiled back, feeling my heart – already full of her – overflow a bit. “I can handle that.”
“Hey, Kai,” she called, making me turn back to find she had already freed her zipper most of the way down her back, her pale pink underwear slightly visible. How she managed to get that damn thing down was beyond me.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you for coming for me.”
“I will always come for you, Jules,” I told her, voice heavy, watching as something came over her eyes, something I didn’t know well enough to recognize, but it made something heavy settle on my chest. But heavy in a good way, if that was possible. “Always,” I affirmed, closing the door behind me as I went out, fetching her hot chocolate, finding her just turning off the water when I got back.
It was several long minutes later before she emerged. Wearing my white tee, her red hair dropping little watermarks on the shoulders.
Seeing her in my shirt was like a punch to the gut, everything within me screaming how right it was.
But one look at her face, the pain in her eyes, the bruises under her eyes, the gauze wrapped around her hands, reminded me that this was not under the circumstances that anyone could call right.
“Come on. Got your hot chocolate with a Excedrin Migraine chaser,” I told her, waving to her side of the bed.
I watched as she moved there numbly, took the pills with her hot chocolate, then climbed under the covers, sitting upright against the headboard.
“Hey Kai?”
“Yeah?” I asked, watching her profile until she turned to face me.
“Who was on the phone? Back in the basement?”
I hesitated, taking a breath, wondering if I had made a mistake.
Calling him.
Siccing him on her ex.
I’d acted out of rage at seeing her hurt at his hands.
But, I reminded myself, he had been planning to kill her.
Slowly.
Painfully.
It had been the right move.
Even if admitting that to Jules was going to be one of the hardest things I had ever done.
Even if by admitting it, Jules would never look at me the same again.
I took a deep breath, keeping eye-contact.
“Bellamy.”
There.
It was out.
Jules had never – as far as I knew – met Bellamy. But that didn’t mean she didn’t know who he was, what he was, what he did, why Quin wanted him on the team.
Because, well, Bellamy had a title like all of us did.
Bellamy was known as The Executioner.
–
Flashback – 30 months before –
