Page 149 of Immune

“Then suffer in silence,” I mutter.

From somewhere behind me, Ewan whispers, “I reckon you could find a romantic greeting card in there somewhere.”

“Ewan,” four voices blurt at once, mine included.

He raises both of his hands and croons, “Oh, now that was a beautiful harmony. We could build a choir out of that. Us Welsh are really good at choirs. This means we’re healing as a group, team.”

I glare at him.

He points at Fletcher. “Well, he is.”

There’s a laugh that almost bubbles out of me and it’s completely unacceptable. I bury it by pressing fresh gauze to Fletcher’s shoulder, wrapping tape around the wound with hurried but efficient urgency. Fletcher watches my hands, but I watch the blood, because that shit is safer than anything else.

“You took a hit you didn’t need to take,” I mutter quietly.

His voice is even lower when he answers. “I took a hit I chose to take.”

“That isn’t any better,” I tell him, glaring a hole into his shoulder.

“To me, it is,” he answers.

I look at him then. Like, really look at him. My eyes trace the scar on his cheek, analyze the depth of blue of his eyes, and scan the line of his mouth. I look at the pain he’s swallowing back instead of showing. The steadiness that once felt like a wall closing in and now feels like something so much worse.

A shield.

Chosen. Not mine. Not yet. Maybe never, but there all the same.

My chest feels too tight as I tie off the bandage with a small amount of unnecessary force. “There. Try not to go bleeding all heroically through that in the next five minutes.”

“I’ll try my best,” he answers calmly.

“Your best seems to be incredibly questionable,” I point out to him, as if he wasn’t already fully aware.

“Fair ’nough,” he says.

I lean back, but not far enough. For one heavy second, we stay a little too close. His breath brushes the edges of my bandana, and my hand still rests against his chest. It’s pressed over the bandage, feeling the solid thumping of his heartbeat under layers of blood and muscle and all the control he wears like armor.

He looks at my hand, and so do I. Then I snatch it back like he’s burned my palm. With a very clear warning, I say, “Don’t make it a thing.”

“Wasn’t going to,” he swears.

“You were thinking about it.”

“I think about a lot of things,” he says, blue eyes boring into me.

I raise an eyebrow. “Well, think quieter.”

That almost gets the better of him. A real almost-smile pulls at his mouth, brief and sharp and too good on him. My stomach flips, and I immediately decide my stomach is a bitch.

Across the room, the shutter crank finally gives under Kaito and Xeon’s combined efforts, groaning upward inch by inch. Ewan keeps watch at the broken service door, pipe in hand and humming under his breath like an idiot who’s decided fear is actually something optional.

The loading access opens into a darker passage, and air moves through it. It’s stale, but it’s open. An exit we didn’t have before. This is good, because we need an exit. I need distance. From Fletcher. From the blood staining my hands. From that damned sentence still sitting between my ribs like a bomb waiting to explode.

You don’t get to be the only one who keeps people alive.

I stand too fast and my knee protests the movement. Fletcher’s hands twitch as if he wants to reach out and steady me, but he doesn’t, which is good. That tells me he’s learning, at least.

I sling my backpack over my shoulder the moment I’m standing, ignoring the pain in my arm, and step back. Fletcher heaves himself up off the floor right after me, slower than usual but still solid enough that I find it irritating.