I eat. He steals my bacon. We drive to the medical building — the same one where I sat alone in a bloody jacket and wrote N/A on the emergency contact line. The parking lot looks different with Vaughn in the driver's seat.
"Should have called you that day," I say quietly. "Should have let you be here."
"You're letting me be here now."
The waiting room. The nurse calling my name. And then: "Boyfriend?" she asks Vaughn with a smile.
"Yes," I say before he can. "He's my boyfriend."
The word comes out easy. No performance. No hedging. Just a fact, as simple as my name or the number of stitches in my hand.
Vaughn's whole face softens.
The doctor's gentle and efficient. She unwraps the bandage, examines the healing line across my palm. "These look great. Nice clean healing."
"Ready?" she asks.
I grip Vaughn's hand — his right hand, my right hand, our good hands locked together. "Ready."
"Look at me," Vaughn says. "Keep your eyes on me."
I fix my gaze on his face. Gold-flecked eyes. The stubble he didn't shave. The tiny scar by his left eyebrow.
"Little pinch," the doctor says.
The pull of the first stitch. My grip tightens. Vaughn doesn't wince, even though I'm probably crushing his fingers.
"You're doing good," he murmurs.
One by one. The tugging sensation making my stomach flip, but Vaughn's eyes steady on mine, and his voice low and calm, and his hand solid in my hand. The hand I should have been holding days ago. The hand that was there, waiting, if I'd only asked.
"All done." Fresh bandage — small, barely there. "The scar will fade. It'll be minimal."
"Range of motion?" I ask. "I'm a pastry chef. I need my hands."
She has me flex, extend, make a fist. It's stiff. The scar pulls when I close my fingers all the way, a tight heat that makes me wince.
"That's normal. It'll loosen up over the next few weeks. Gentle stretching, don't push through sharp pain. You can start using it for light tasks — no heavy lifting, no sustained gripping for another week."
In the car, I open and close my hand. Open. Close. The scar is a thin pink line across my left palm, still angry, still healing. My fingers don't close all the way yet. There's a gap between my fingertips and my palm — maybe half an inch of space that used to be nothing and is now everything.
"Can you hold this?" Vaughn hands me his coffee cup.
I wrap my left hand around it. The warmth feels good on the scar. My fingers grip — not tight, not confident, but they grip.
"Yeah," I say. "I can hold it."
He doesn't say anything. Just drives. But his hand finds my knee and stays there.
At home, I go straight to the kitchen. Vaughn follows, leaning in the doorway, watching. He knows what I need to do and he's not going to stop me.
I pull out a whisk. Wrap my left hand around the handle. The metal is cold and familiar and my fingers don't close all the way and I can feel the scar pulling but I'm holding a whisk. I'm holding a whisk in my left hand for the first time in too many days.
I try a whisking motion. Stiff. Weak. The kind of movement that would get me screamed at in Gordon's kitchen.
But Gordon's kitchen doesn't exist anymore.
I try again. Better. Not good — not the fast, fluid motion that's lived in my muscle memory since culinary school — but the wrist moves, the fingers hold, the scar stretches without tearing.