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Instead, I kneeled beside him and pressed my hand over his. His skin was warm and steady, unlike how clammy it had been in the cab. My own hand shook like a leaf in the breeze.
“Come on, let’s get you into the bed,” I said, amazed my voice held steady.
With Egret on one side and me on the other, we waddled our way through the bathroom doorway, down the short hall, and into one of the safe house’s two bedrooms. Eszter was placing the last of the clean towels atop already stacked pillows. A more perfect landing spot, I couldn’t imagine.
“Is this okay?” she asked in the sweetest, most sheepish voice I’d ever heard.
Thomas, his head lolling as we half dragged him in, grinned down. “It’s perfect, Eszter. You’ll make a fine nurse one day, if that’s what you want.”
If sunlight could pour through skin, it flowed out of Eszter at Thomas’s words. He reached a weakened hand out, but instead of gripping, she stepped forward and pressed her cheek to his palm. Egret and I stopped walking. The moment froze, and I was certain all four of us had to fight to contain our hearts from leaping out of our chests.
When Eszter pulled back, we propped Thomas up on her neatly stacked towel-covered pillows. His bandaged shoulder glowed pink under the flickering lamp, clean gauze layered thick beneath a torn undershirt.
His face was pale, eyes drawn with deep bags bulging beneath.
He looked like hell.
But he was breathing.
And for the first time since that goddamn shot went off, I let myself sit.
Sparrow pushed a chipped mug of water into his good hand and gave me a stern nod—the kind that meant he was stable for the moment, so I could stop hovering.
I didn’t move far. Just to the foot of the bed. Just close enough to touch him if I needed to. We were no longer just treating his bullet wound; we were tending my fragile heart.
“You should lie down, too,” Sparrow said to me, wiping her hands on a moist towel. “You look like you took the bullet.”
I shook my head but couldn’t speak.
She gave a small grunt of disapproval and turned away, muttering something about checking the locks and backup meds. Egret went with her, pausing in the doorway.
“Don’t let him bleed on the blankets,” he said. “We might need them for hiding under later.”
I flipped him off without looking back. Thomas laughed—a single dry crack that likely cost him something. He winced, shifting just slightly.
“Moron,” I muttered.
“I missed you, too.”
I moved to sit beside him, unable to tolerate the distance, and ran my hand through his hair, brushing it back off his forehead. He closed his eyes as though he didn’t want the moment to end, as though he needed the stillness.
So did I.
We’d been running too long.
From gunfire. From shadows. From the world that said we couldn’t be what we were to each other.
And tonight, everything I held dear had almost ended in a hallway, beneath a chandelier I couldn’t even remember.
“You saved her,” I said.
He opened one eye. “We saved her.”
“No.” I swallowed. “You went first. You always do.”
He reached for my hand with his good one. “So you can follow. That’s how this works.”
The way he said it, like it was the simplest truth in the world—I felt something in me shift, something old, something that had been cracked for months now. Only then, it fell back into place.