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Jaz is still unconscious when they take her into surgery. The surgeons need to repair the damage the blade made when Jared fucking stabbed her and did who knows what else when she was tied to the bed.
An elderly doctor with a handlebar mustache stitches up the side of my leg where Jared sliced me. Finn holds my hand through it all, thin lips pressing together and watching the doctor work. Dempsey and Jax are just outside the room. Every time a nurse comes in, Dempsey looks up, his hand clutching his phone tightly. I can imagine my brother is chomping at the bit to talk to me.
“I shouldn’t have let you go home alone,” Finn whispers. He runs his thumb over my knuckles.
“We had no idea this was going to happen,” I tell him. And honestly, I count myself lucky. I could be Jaz right now. In fact, I’m pissed because I should be Jaz right now. Some fucking crazy person infiltrated our lives because of me...and my brother.
I peek up at Finn, my vision fracturing in front of me. He frowns, reaching up to slide his fingers across my cheeks. There’s so much that needs to be said, but we need to be alone to do it.
The harsh lights of the emergency room show every worry line on the trainer’s handsome face. His pinched gaze softens only when he looks at me, but it rips me apart all the same because he’s blaming himself when he shouldn’t be.
My skin pinches when the doctor tugs on the thread. He gave me a really awesome localized pain reliever in the form of a couple of shots, so the only thing that really hurts is my head. The ice pack on it helps to numb it for now, but I’m going to have a huge bump there. I can already tell.
“You were pretty lucky,” the doctor tsks. “I’m sure it hurts but in reality, this knife wound was just a graze at best. We see a lot worse here.”
I’m sure they fucking do. This is the Heights after all.
“Thank you,” I tell him. “I guess that’s one positive for the day.”
He gives me a small smile with wise eyes under bushy white eyebrows. “I’m going to put some more germ-killing stuff on this.” He dumps an amber brown liquid onto a cotton ball and wipes it across my calf, turning my skin an orange yellow. A sterile pad goes on next, placed there by his steady fingers, then gauze, and finally, he wraps my leg in white cloth. “You should stay off this leg. Give it time to heal so you don’t pull the stitches out.”
Finn places his arm around my shoulders, squeezing me as the doctor wheels away on his stool to start throwing away the remnants of the medical supplies he used on me. “She will,” he answers for me.
The doctor peels off his rubber gloves last, throwing them in a separate container. “I’m going to let your other friends in now since they’ve been giving everyone the stink eye.”
I can’t contain the smile. Of course they are. “Thank you for everything,” I tell him. Those words are beginning to sound like an echo. I’ve been doing nothing but thanking everyone from the moment we got here.
“You betcha.” He uses hand sanitizer before pulling the door open, speaking softly to the two guys waiting out in the hallway for me.
As soon as he’s out of the way, Dempsey strides inside. He already has his phone to his ear. “Here she is.”
I take the offered black cell with a Dragon case and hold it to my mouth. “Hey.”
“Leenie,” Cole sighs. “You okay?”
Dempsey toes the door shut, and I smile. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
He doesn’t say anything for several moments. Instead shuddering breaths meet my ears until he says, “Tell me what happened. Don’t leave anything out.”
I lick my dry lips, still holding the package of ice to my head. “Hold on. I’m going to put you on speaker.” I pull the phone away and press the appropriate button. “You there?”
“Yeah.”
His voice filling the room instantly relaxes me. Everyone else has been wanting to hear what happened, too, and this is the first chance we’ve all gotten to be alone. Three pairs of eyes stare at me, so I take a deep breath. “I’m in the emergency department with Jax, Finn, and Dempsey. Jaz is in surgery.” My voice breaks.
“I’m so sorry, Leenie.” His first words are filled with so much emotion, but his next words may as well be stained in blood. “We vetted that fucker.”
Dempsey’s scowl tightens, and he pulls his shoulders back. Some of the blame will probably be placed on his shoulders.
“It’s not your fault.”
Cole grunts, but he doesn’t say anything more.
“I left Jax and Finn’s this morning to get ready for work. Oh shit, work.”
“I called the bank,” Finn tells me. “On Jaz’s behalf, too. They’re worried about you both.”
I peer up at him gratefully, and he leans down to kiss my temple, narrowly avoiding my new ice-cold accessory.