It did not come down to the sex or the composition of her breath playing against the rain when she slept. It was not how she would twirl her fingers into my hair or the sound of her tongue clicking against her teeth whenever she read naughty books beside the window. I mean, those pieces were heaven, but it was not what hurt.
No.
It was the atmosphere of the house without her in it. In the way, I started bumping into shit because everything slipped one centimeter to the left the moment she walked out of the goddamn door.
Me included.
But not Threx. He did not shift. He dissolved.
“Holy fuck,” a level two breathed, rushing up to peer over Nathem’s shoulder at the injury.
“MOVE,” I snapped, blinking into the pale-yellow burn sinking behind my vision.
“I can’t believe he was hit,” the green one choked out.
What a stupid fucking thing to say, but I didn’t have it in me to fight the light in his eyes.
There is a moment for each of us when this all becomes real.
Most of the time, it arrives with your hand on the trigger and the cold knowledge that you are about to pull it. But for others, it slips in more quietly. Through a look from your family that loves you no matter what, but not no matter who. Or after saying I love you to the woman waiting for you after spending half the night fucking someone else in every sinister angle you dreamed of.
Blade had been giving them shit in the kitchen this morning, and now he might die in it.Yeah, Buddy. This is what you signed up for.
“Get back,” Jessie snapped, forcing the space open with his body. “Did cleanup set out?” he questioned, already rolling Blade sunny-side up onto the plastic sheet laid out and waiting.
“Yes,” the level two replied, watching Blade’s head loll to the left.
“Where the hell is Threx?” Nathem asked, but I chose not to answer. There was only one place he could be, and I would get to him later. For now, my mind begged me to focus on one thing at a time.
“I’ve got it,” the doc barked, moving through the common room and dropping to his knees next to the bag of medical gear that clanged to the floor. “Tell me what happened,” he asked as he worked, his hands shifting up the wound before placing a pulse oximeter and a couple of leads on Blade’s chest.
The man was depraved. But in saving lives, he was reliable.
Jessie filled him in, leaving out any obligatory information that might implicate the bastard. Not that he wasn’t already.
“Here.” He shoved a pair of sterile gloves into Nathem’s and Jessie’s hands. “I need you to hold him still. I don’t have anesthesia, and this is going to hurt like hell.”
“You can’t give him anything?” Jessie bit out, grabbing the gloves and pulling them on.
“The best I can do is moderate sedation, and even that might not stick.”
Moderate sedation made it possible for a patient to be conscious during a procedure with no memory of the pain. It was compliance without the trauma, one that let you walk away free of the breaking, kind of like what Daphne did to Threx by being near him, coaxing his physiology into a state that allowed him to survive.
But now that he was waking up, there was no way to stop the dam. To keep him from feeling everything. From processing the loss of her not just in his space, but in his goddamn body.
“Hey,” Jessie looked up at me. “It’s a bad time, but the diagnostics came back on that phone you had me look into.” He kept it ambiguous on purpose. Aside from Threx, he was the only one who knew about Lyla’s involvement in selling Daphne to Karsten.
“And?” I asked, blinking through the procedure. Nathem’s grip clenched when Dr. Jace inserted the tweezers, opening the wound to get a cleaner view.
“AAAAAAAAH!” Blade’s scream burst through the night.
“It’s okay, buddy. We got you!” his friend coaxed, holding him tighter.
“Get the fuck off me!” Blade wrenched to the side, his boot lifting in a sporadic lurch before landing square in the doctor’s face.
Crack.
“I told you to fucking hold him down,” the PhD growled through the blood coating his teeth, spitting onto the floor.