Page 27

Lauren

Logan wasn’t doing well, and that sucked because I really wasn’t doing well. Exhaustion and pain had caught up with me when he’d made that satellite phone call to his team. I hadn’t been sure I’d ever be getting off that floor again.

But we’d made it here and were relatively safe for the time being. But this wound needed some stitches, I couldn’t do it, and Logan was looking shakier by the minute. I needed to find the strength for both of us.

“We need to clean and stitch this.” My voice came out steadier than I felt. The adrenaline that had carried me through the jungle was fading, leaving behind a bone-deep exhaustion that made thinking feel like swimming through mud. “What sorts of supplies do we have?”

Logan arranged what little was available with military precision—a first aid kit with sutures, some vodka, a few painkillers.

I went ahead and took those. I was going to need them in my system as quickly as possible.

He filled a glass with water from the sink and used his water purification tablets.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was better than nothing.

“Okay, let’s do this.” He cracked his knuckles, a tell I’d noticed when he was forcing calm. The sound echoed in the small room, mixing with the distant noise of hammers and saws from the storm cleanup outside.

“Right.” I needed to be in control for both of us right now. “Peel away the shirt I used as a bandage first.” Clinical detachment was easier than acknowledging how much this would hurt. “Careful with the fabric. It’s probably stuck to the wound.”

His hands turned gentle as he eased the blood-crusted material away from my body. The cotton pulled at the edges of the wound, sending fresh sparks of pain through my nervous system. I kept my face neutral, but he noticed anyway—a slight pause, a softer touch.

The makeshift bandage peeled away sticky and dark, revealing torn flesh that looked worse in the last light of the day filtering through the window. Deep enough to need sutures, shallow enough that nothing vital had been compromised. Lucky.

“Fuck,” he muttered, getting his first real look at the damage. “I’m sorry.”

I settled back against the flat pillow that smelled of mildew and old cigarette smoke. “Wash it with water first, then alcohol. Don’t be conservative with either.”

He knelt beside me, positioning himself for the best angle, as I held the bowl under me to keep the liquids off the bed. “Ready?”

I nodded, trying to force myself to stay loose.

The water brought relief, sluicing away dried blood and jungle debris.

Pink rivulets ran down my side, soaking into the bowl.

Then came the alcohol. White-hot heat raced along every nerve, stealing the air from my lungs.

My teeth found my lip hard enough to taste copper, and my hands fisted in the rough blanket.

“Sorry.” His free hand covered mine where I gripped the mattress edge. His palm was warm, callused from years of handling weapons.

I nodded, breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. Now, it was time for the hardest part.

“Thread the needle. Smallest gauge.” The words came through clenched teeth. “Tissue’s already angry enough without using rope to close it.”

Silence stretched while he worked on the needle. I studied his face, using his concentration as an anchor against the burning in my side. His hands were steadier now as he threaded it on the second try.

“Start at the top of the wound,” I instructed. “Small bites, about a quarter inch from the edge. Pull through until the knot catches.”

He followed my guidance, making the first stitch with careful precision. The needle pierced skin, and I forced myself to stay still despite the sharp pain.

“Good. Now bring it across to the opposite side, same distance from the edge.”

We worked through four more stitches that way, him following my instructions while I tried to breathe through the pain. His movements were controlled, methodical. After eight, he was able to tie it off.

I was sweating, wanting to sob, but it was done.

He took the bowl and equipment back over to the sink then came back and sat on the edge of the bed, picking up the bloody shirt I’d used as a bandage.

“Just toss that.” It was useless anyway. I closed my eyes and leaned back against the wall behind me.

I was feeling a little better now that I wasn’t being stabbed with a needle.

“You okay?” I asked when Logan didn’t move. I expected a joke or a sigh or a comment about how long before we needed to leave to meet his team.

Still nothing.

“Logan?”

“My mom made me learn to sew when I was eight.” The words emerged distant, as if he were speaking from another room. “Said everybody should know how to fix things. Didn’t matter if you were a boy or girl, you should know how to mend what gets torn.”

His focus stayed on the cloth, but his breathing had changed—shorter, less controlled. “Made the ugliest pillowcase in existence that weekend. Used three different colors of thread because I kept running out. Mom displayed it on the couch for months anyway.”

Normal story. Wrong tone. His chest rose and fell too quickly, that careful control starting to crack like ice under pressure.

“She used to say—” The words cut off. He stared at the cloth in his hands, his pupils dilating in a way that had nothing to do with the dim light. “Said fixing things mattered as much as…as protecting them. But you can’t fix—some things can’t be?—”

“Logan?” I kept my voice low, watching the color drain from his face, and a bead of sweat rolled down his temple despite the relatively cool air. The cloth dropped onto the floor. “Look at me.”

But he’d already gone somewhere else. His breathing turned ragged, harsh in the quiet room. Sweat broke across his forehead in earnest now, and his whole body locked, rigid, muscles remembering some other moment. The needle fell from nerveless fingers, landing on the dirty floor.

“Stop the bleeding.” The words came out fractured, desperate. His hands moved toward me, but it wasn’t me he was seeing. “Pressure isn’t—no, that’s not right. The angle’s wrong. Carter, stay with me. Goddammit, stay with me!”

Understanding hit like cold water. He wasn’t here anymore. Wasn’t seeing my wound or this shabby room with its water-stained ceiling.

But he was definitely seeing blood.

He was trapped in memory, watching someone bleed out beneath his hands. The way he kept looking at his palms, turning them over like he could still see blood there, made my heart clench.

“You’re having a flashback.” I spoke clearly, though he showed no recognition. His eyes stayed fixed on something I couldn’t see, probably couldn’t imagine. “What you’re seeing already happened. It’s not happening now. You’re safe.”

His chest heaved, heading toward hyperventilation.

Each breath came shorter, sharper, like he couldn’t get enough air.

The muscles in his neck corded with tension, and I could see his pulse hammering visibly at his throat.

I needed to help, but wrong moves could deepen the spiral.

Touch could register as threat. Loud noises could trigger worse.

He sank onto the bed’s edge like his strings had been cut, lost in whatever horror had claimed him.

His whole frame shook—not shivers but full-body tremors that started in his core and radiated outward.

I crawled toward him slowly, letting him see the movement even though his eyes weren’t tracking, before my fingers found his wrist. His pulse hammered hummingbird-fast beneath my touch, probably pushing 140 beats per minute. Dangerous if it stayed there.

“Can’t stop it.” His voice cracked, raw with remembered desperation. “My hands keep slipping in all the—there’s too much—I can feel his pulse getting weaker. James is looking at me. He knows. Carter, stay with me, man. James…”

“Logan, listen to my voice. We’re in Puerto Esperanza. Second floor of a bar called El Pescador. There’s water damage on the ceiling that looks like a map of Europe if you squint. Peeling paint on the walls, probably lead-based, from the color. Good thing we don’t live here.”

Nothing. His eyes stayed fixed on horrors I couldn’t see. But I kept talking, using the same tone I used with patients in crisis—calm, steady, absolutely certain.

Even when, like now, I felt anything but certain.

“Feel the wool blanket under your hands? Scratchy as hell. Probably hasn’t been washed in a year. There’s a stain near the foot that might be coffee or might be something worse. The mattress squeaks every time we move.”

His breathing grew more ragged, punctuated now by sounds that might have been words or might have been sobs. Time was slipping away. We had hours, not days. The boat wouldn’t wait, and Mateo’s men wouldn’t stop searching.

“Remember Elena’s coffee?” I switched tactics, pulling up shared memories like breadcrumbs leading him back to now. “It was so awful. But she was so proud when she brought it, like she’d given us liquid gold. What a smart kid she is.”

A flicker. Barely there, but I caught it—the slightest change in his expression, like someone swimming up from deep water.

“The juane in those big green leaves. Still warm from her grandmother’s kitchen. You said it beat field rations any day.” I touched his shoulder, gentle pressure, grounding. “You told me about the time Ty tried to cook fish over a campfire and nearly poisoned your whole team.”

His gasps slowed incrementally, though his hands still trembled where they rested on his thighs. I could see him fighting, trying to claw his way back from wherever the flashback had taken him.

“And that hurricane shelter where we waited out the storm? Just us while the world tore itself apart outside. The walls shook and the roof screamed, but inside, we were safe. You made me feel safe.” I let my voice drop lower, more intimate.

“Your hands on me in that shelter. Your mouth. How you made me feel beautiful when I’d convinced myself I was anything but. ”

Awareness washed back into his eyes like a dam breaking. His pupils contracted, focusing on my face with desperate intensity. “Lauren?”

“Right here. We’re safe. Both of us.”

He turned into me with desperate urgency, face finding the curve of my neck like it was the only safe harbor in a storm.

His arms came around me carefully, avoiding the fresh stitches even through his distress.

I pulled him close, ignoring the protest from my ribs, the pull of new sutures.

He needed this more than I needed to avoid pain.

But he remembered and looked down at my wound. “You’re hurt.”

He stiffened, slipping away again, that thousand-yard stare beginning to return. I could see him getting pulled back under, and I couldn’t let that happen. Not again. So, I did the only thing I could think of—I kissed him.

Not gently. Not carefully. I pulled his face to mine and kissed him with everything I had, trying to anchor him to the present, to me, to now.

For a moment, he was frozen, caught between past and present.

Then I felt it—the exact moment he came back to me.

His whole body shuddered, and suddenly, he was kissing me back with desperate intensity.

The kiss transformed from my attempt to ground him into something else entirely. Pure need stripped of technique. His mouth moved against mine with desperate pressure, like he was trying to prove we were both still alive.

We both needed each other with a yearning that didn’t make sense, given the fact that we’d had sex multiple times just last night. But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was getting as close to each other as possible right now.

Our clothes stayed mostly in place—shifted aside just enough. His shirt pushed up, my pants pushed down, both of us too desperate for connection to care about full undressing. He positioned himself over me, then paused, some awareness breaking through.

“Your side?—”

I pulled him down, cutting off his words with another kiss. The stitches pulled, but I didn’t care. This wasn’t about being careful. This was about being alive.

He entered me in one long thrust, both of us gasping at the connection. No buildup, no preparation beyond the desperate need to join. I was wet enough from emotion and adrenaline that my body accepted him without resistance.

There were no words after that. Just his weight pressing me into the mattress, his breath hot against my neck, the sound of skin against skin in the dim room. He moved without finesse, without rhythm at first—just raw, driving need. I pulled him deeper, ignoring the protest from my side.

This wasn’t gentle. Wasn’t careful. His hands gripped my hip and arm hard enough to bruise, and I welcomed it. Every thrust was an affirmation— we’re here, we’re alive, we survived . My nails found his back through his shirt, holding on as he drove into me with increasing desperation.

The joining was primal, almost violent in its intensity. Two people using their bodies to chase away death and memory and all the horrors that tried to claim them. I bit down on his shoulder to muffle the sounds escaping me, tasted salt and sweat and life.

When release crashed over him, his whole body went rigid, a guttural sound torn from his throat.

He pressed deep and held there, shuddering through it while I held him tight.

The physical sensations were secondary to the emotional release—feeling him let go, feeling him choose life and connection over the darkness that had tried to pull him under.

We stayed joined afterward, both of us breathing hard, neither willing to separate. His weight on me felt necessary, grounding. The silence between us wasn’t empty—it overflowed with everything language couldn’t carry.

Eventually, he shifted slightly, taking some weight on his elbows, but stayed inside me. His forehead rested against mine, eyes closed, breath evening out slowly.

We should both get up, but neither of us did. Neither of us wanted to lose this connection.

Nothing else mattered. Just this. Just us.