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“I don’t… fully know,” Jax said, his face pulling with small winces at my touch. “I bought the ice, and I was coming back from the cable car and I—ahh!”
“Sorry,” I whispered, dabbing at where the skin had split above his brow. “This… I think this might need stitches.”
“I’m calling an ambulance,” Luke said as he started rummaging in his pockets for his phone.
“No,” Jax groaned. “I’m fine, honestly.”
“Bullshit,” I snapped, the acid sweeping up my chest. “You’re not fine and you were—you’re not fine.”
“Summer—” Jax tried.
“You’re not fine,” I snapped, then I caught myself. I had to stay focused.
“Keep going,” Theo coaxed.
“I was… I was walking up the path and then something hit me over the head from behind and I…” His brow dipped, searching through fogged thoughts for details as Theo rose slightly and gently began examining the back of Jax’s head. His fingers came away bloody, and he sent me a glance. I passed the kit over to Theo and he got to work.
“It was so sudden and so hard it didn’t even hurt,” Jax said, his voice slowly gaining strength as he spoke. “I went down so fast and then I don’t… I don’t really remember much after that. Just punches, so many over and over, and I…” He sucked in a breath and winced sharply. “Then it was just darkness. I woke up in the snow, alone, and I… fuck, I don’t know. It took me ages to get back up here.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you take security with you?” Luke snapped.
“To get ice?” Jax asked, his lips pulling into a smile.
“Yes,” Luke continued. “You’re fucking important, Jax.”
“I’m not taking security with me to get ice, Luke. Not ever.”
“You should have,” Luke growled.
I understood where he was coming from; the same fire licked at my own heart. If he had taken security with him, this wouldn’t have happened. Although, I understood Jax was unwilling to disturb the security guards staying down at the next cabin, on Christmas Eve, just for some ice. Trying to organize those thoughts into words was impossible, so instead I focused on his wounds until something he had said caught in my mind.
“When you were out, were you in the snow?”
Jax nodded.
I glanced at the clock, then back to his pale, chilled skin and the ever so slight tremble that was moving through him. “You might be in the early stages of hypothermia; we really should get you to a hospital.”
“No,” Jax said immediately. “Not on Christmas.”
“Jax,” Theo warned, dabbing at his head wound. “Please.”
“No,” Jax repeated. “I’m fine.”
I opened my mouth to insist but Jax caught my wrist. “I’m fine.”
It put us in a difficult position, but no one was really willing to argue. With the suspected risk of hypothermia, Jax was stripped out of his wet clothes and bundled up in blankets near the fire. Theo poured a hot chocolate down his throat after patching up his head wound, and I remained silent as I placed a few butterfly bandages on his brow and cleaned up the grazes from whatever had been used to beat him. Luke warmed food in the oven.
Within forty minutes, Jax was patched up the best we could, and I used what ice he had saved to create a makeshift compress around the dark bruising bleeding over his rib cage. As food warmed, Luke darted upstairs and used a video chat to show Bonnie to Jax as none of us would let him leave the warmth of the fire. Seeing his daughter calmed him down a fraction, and soon Jax was slowly eating some leftovers while we bundled around him, watching.
Was this Marina? Had she turned to terrible tactics to try and bully Jax into submission, or was it something else? I couldn’t decide, and my mind couldn’t settle either. The same questions seemed to flash over the faces of Luke and Theo as they watched over Jax like hawks. It was heartwarming to see, and the concern was only broken by flashes of anger or the odd curl of a fist; likely each man fantasizing about taking care of whoever did this to Jax.
After some silence, Luke finally sighed and moved closer to Jax.
“While you were out napping in the snow,” Luke began, “you missed something.”
Jax snorted, then winced. “Ah. Don’t make me laugh. Who won Charades?”
“Bonnie and Ava and me,” I smiled softly.
