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“Need you to listen carefully, Tamsyn,” Jasper said in a terse voice. “He’s alive. I’m doing my best to keep him that way, but I need your help.”

“W-What can I-I do?” she whispered.

“He keeps regaining consciousness.” Jasper’s hands were working a mile a minute, doing whatever it was that held Merrick on the plane of the living. “Sit by his head, talk to him. Let him know you’re here and alive, that he has something to fight for. The bullet went straight through his gut. I don’t think it hit anything major, but it nicked an artery.”

There was a lot of blood. Pouring from a small hole that Jasper’s long fingers were attempting to plug, pooling in Merrick’s navel and dribbling down his sides.

She jumped when Jasper shouted, “Where the fuck is that damn med kit?”

Afraid he might turn that angry voice on her, Tamsyn pushed herself beyond the fear swamping her for Merrick and staggered forward to drop to her knees by his head. Hands hovering over his face, fluttering with the urge to touch, she didn’t know what to do.

“Touch him, sweetheart. It’s the little things like the heat of your hands and the feel of your skin that make a big difference, even if you think they don’t.”

She wasn’t entirely convinced about that. Merrick’s eyes were closed, the green hidden away. His face was slack, the muscles free from pain. Surely if her touch and her voice were going to make a difference, there should be some kind of… reciprocation wasn’t the right word. Reaction, response?

Some sign that he wasn’t lost in the darkness, far beyond her reach.

Shutting out the people around her, closing out Jasper’s voice as he barked orders and fought to stop the bleeding, Tamsyn set her shaking hands on Merrick’s cheeks, tears stinging her eyes at the prickle of his beard against her skin.

While he wasn’t cold, she noticed a distinct lack of warmth. Unsurprising really, what with all the blood vacating his body through that tiny hole in his belly.

She tried to speak, to give him the words she knew he’d offer if their roles were reversed, but her vocal chords were trapped in a chokehold again. How was she supposed to talk when the man she loved, the man who’d saved her and showed her who she was, how to love, how to be so much more than her father ever wanted for her, was dying in front of her?

So she didn’t speak. She didn’t use words to connect with him.

Instead, she let her hands converse with him, the way he often did when they laid in bed with her back to his chest and his arm around her waist. She loved how his palms stroked over her, how he told her what he was feeling simply through touch alone.

Caressing the contours of his face, the soft lines at the corner of his eyes, Tamsyn silently willed him to stay with her. Not to leave her here alone, navigating this scary world without him. Not to ask her to exist with her heart broken and soul in pieces.

Someone came running, sliding to a stop beside Jasper, but their presence barely registered on her radar. If she thought about what the sadist was doing to Merrick, the measures he was resorting to in order to keep him alive, she didn’t know if she’d be able to maintain her tremulous composure.

I need you, Merrick.

Please don’t go.

Take me with you.

Bending forward, ignoring the aches and pains in her weary body, she kissed his forehead before resting hers against it.

I don’t want to live without you.

Chapter Sixteen

Merrick

Getting shot in the gut was a highly unpleasant experience.

Technically, he supposed the actual shooting wasn’t the worst part; the recovery, however… well, that just sucked donkey-sized balls if he was perfectly honest. The five-star meds pumping through his bloodstream were incredibly efficient at keeping the pain at bay, but once they started to wear off…

All pain and no respite made Merrick a grumpy boy indeed.

A week after the showdown at Serenity, he was spending less time in a drugged haze, much to his relief. The whole seven days were a fragmented collection of snapshots in time—mainly being prodded, poked, and sent spiraling into the morphine abyss.

Right now, with his faculties in full working order for the first time in what felt like forever, he actually felt somewhat like himself, aside from the wires and tubes hooking him up to various machines and drips.

“Welcome back to planet earth,” a voice said from the doorway. “Mind if I come in?”

Merrick cocked his head, lifting his hand—the one without the wires and gadgets attached to it—to wave Jasper in. “Door’s open. Didn’t think you’d still be here.”