Page 121 of Blood & Throttle

Which, lucky for him, changed today.

I grin to myself as I scrub the dried blood from my knuckles at the edge of the sink. My reflection’s a mess—hair wild, sweat-damp, streaks of someone else’s blood across my collarbone—but there’s a glint in my eyes that wasn’t there yesterday. The kind of glint that says I’m not sorry. Not even a little.

I can still hear the crowd in my head. Screaming. Chanting. Wild with bloodlust while I sat on top of Jace with my gun jammed in his mouth.

And the best part?

He wasn’t looking up at me like he didn’t know what I’d do. He knew. He was crying. Silent. Begging like the little bitch he is.

A shame they dragged him away. I would’ve made it clean. Beautiful, even.

But instead, I’m here. With Riot. And that’s the only thing that makes not pulling the trigger worth it.

I turn toward the bed, where he sits in the low flicker of the overhead bulb, shoulders tense, blood still drying on his skin. Our tiny room smells like iron and oil, metal, sweat, and blood. The kind of scent that sinks into skin and never washes out.

It clings to him but I don’t think he minds.

He’s sitting at the edge of the bed like the fight’s still happening in his head. One hand rests on his thigh, the other holding a stim packet he hasn’t cracked yet. His jacket is halfway down his arms, sweat glistening on his chest, and blood stains the band of his pants below where the bullet went clean through his side.

The bandage Luca slapped over it in the pit is soaked through, the edges curling where it’s already saturated. I remember the way he barked at Riot to sit still, how he tore into the med kit without hesitation, shoved gauze into the entry and exit like it would hold. It worked for a while.

But now?

Now the bleeding’s started again. Slower than before, but steady. Pooled dark down his side, tracking the curve of his hip.

It’s too much blood.

More than I’m okay with.

I take him in for a long moment, eyes tracing every shadow of his body, every twitch of tension in his jaw. He looks like he’s unraveling silently. Coming apart at the seams one breath at a time and pretending it’s fine.

He doesn’t look at me.

Not yet.

“You look like shit,” I say as I step toward him, tossing themed kit onto the mattress beside him, my voice sharper than it needs to be, just to keep from sounding worried.

He lets out a grunt that might be a laugh. “Still prettier than Jace.”

“Barely,” I mutter, but my eyes are already locked on the stain blooming along the seam of his shirt. “And Jace wasn’t leaking.”

He turns his head then, just slightly. Just enough to look at me out of the corner of his eye. There’s blood on his temple and a cracked split on his bottom lip. He hasn’t cleaned up, hasn’t even tried and something about that—how unlike him it is—twists sharp in my gut.

I crouch in front of him and pop open the med kit. My hands move fast. Faster than I mean them to as I rip open antiseptic packs and tear open gauze. Every move sharper than it needs to be.

I pull out the suture kit, fingers clenched too tightly around it.

“You gonna be a baby about this?” I mutter, tone biting. But it’s covering something else. The kind of fear I can’t say out loud. The kind that’s tangled up in the wordalmost.

He smirks faintly, but it’s tired. “Probably.”

And just like that, I let myself breathe again.

I peel the bandage off first, slowly and carefully. The gauze sticks, crusted with dried blood, and he grits his teeth as I tug it free. It pulls away with a soft tear revealing the raw line beneath, red and angry-looking.

I soak the cloth in cool alcohol and press it to his side. The blood wipes away in streaks, fresh and wet beneath the dried edge. When I hit the wound directly, he tenses. His hand clamps down on his thigh, jaw locked tight.

“Deep breath,” I murmur.