Chapter 15 #2
At least they’d also thrown together a sleeping area. There were a few cots and blankets scattered around, and by the time I pushed them all together and piled everything up, it looked like a decent-sized bed.
I was lucky enough that there was a rolling cart parked by the supplies, probably what they’d used to haul everything in here to begin with.
Phoenix was still out of it, but awake enough that he grunted and tried to help me when I shifted him onto it and rolled us both back to the room, locking the door behind me.
Which was stupid, because I’d wanted to get away.
I’d wanted to hurt .
I’d wanted him to be pissed instead of curious.
And now I was doing my best to save him, and a part of me would have given anything to just go back and tell him about the fucking scar on my face. It wasn’t that important.
It didn’t matter that much.
It wasn’t worth…
I shook my head. My feelings were at war inside my chest as I got Phoenix into bed—the past that shouldn’t have been able to make itself known in this ugly future, but somehow it had.
And now I was silently praying that it wouldn’t play out the same. That despite the odds, someone wouldn’t have to die because they’d done their best to save me.
I wanted to collapse onto the bed beside Phoenix when I finally got him settled, but I didn’t have that luxury. I stripped him down, carefully laying his bloody clothes to the side—I’d have to rinse them later if this place had running water.
Then there was nothing left for me to do but look at all the ways Phoenix had been hurt because of me.
Just seeing it made my body ache. There were cuts along his chest, shrapnel embedded in his thick muscles.
There was a gash along his side that had been the main source of blood earlier.
It wasn’t deep enough to kill him, but it still needed to be patched up.
The only thing I could do was ransack my bag and sift through the supplies the raiders had stuffed into the corner before coming back to him. I washed his chest carefully, first with water and then with a bottle of alcohol I recognized as something the Order used to sterilize wounds.
The burn made him roar to life, and his hands found my throat and squeezed .
I didn’t try to fight him off. If he killed me now, there wasn’t a damn thing I would do about it—could do about it. Shit, I was pretty sure I deserved it.
While I sat there and felt my pulse, thick and thrumming, protest beneath his grip, recognition slowly bled into Phoenix’s gaze.
His fingers loosened, and he fell back against the sheets with a low groan.
I thought he’d fainted from the pain, but when I wiped his chest clean and frowned at the new wash of blood welling from the wounds, I glanced up at his face to see him staring at me through his lashes.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say.
I just started to carefully pick the broken metal and splintered wood from his skin with fingers that were far more gentle than they would have been if he’d come after me and this hadn’t happened.
I only had to stop once when my hands started to shake. Still, those narrowed eyes never left my face as I worked, and he stayed silent as I double-checked that everything was clear.
Honestly, he was lucky. It could have been worse. I’d seen these same explosives used on crowds of rabid—they could take off limbs. He’d been hit with the very edge of the blowback. There were twisted pieces of metal as big as my fist back in the theater that could have lodged into his chest and…
I swallowed hard, my fingers clenching the sheets beside him to hide my nerves. I wasn’t sure if I needed to scold him for following me when I’d made it clear I didn’t want him to, or if I needed to thank him for saving me.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. I wasn’t worth saving. He shouldn’t have been hurt because of me… and I…
His fingers were shaking when they lifted. I hissed softly as the pads trailed along the wide cut on my shoulder. “This.” Phoenix’s voice was the softest murmur when he spoke. He knew I healed fast, and I wasn’t the one lying on my back in bed.
I frowned and bit back a scathing remark.
“It’s fine. I’ll rinse it out once I’m finished with you.
” I attempted to bat his hand away, but he knocked my wrist to the side and trailed his fingers over the length of it again until I shivered from the mixture of pain and the undercurrent of stinging, confusing joy that he could still touch me .
The image of him lying prone on the ground tried to play behind my eyes again, and I chased it away with the feel of his warm skin as I flattened my palm against his chest and felt the beat of his heart. He was fine. He was alive.
But his fingers ran across the injury on my shoulder again, and when I lifted my gaze and found him staring intently at me, I realized.
Let me go get some new ones.
When Phoenix murmured this again, I sighed.
“When I came in guns blazing, I did take them by surprise. I managed to get through the lobby, but one of the assholes came at me with a fucking sword.” I turned my attention back to his injuries while I spoke—I was going to have to sanitize them one more time before I bandaged them, and hopefully he wouldn’t try to strangle me again when I did.
“I shot him, but he managed to swing at me before I did. Because who comes at someone with a sword, right?”
He snorted in amusement, and my eyes flickered to the axe that I’d laid carefully on the dresser beside us. I didn’t look at his face again, though I could feel his attention focused on me as I double-checked my work and sat back on my heels.
“I need to clean this out one more time and stitch you up. Are you going to try to kill me again?” I finally forced myself to look at his face when I asked.
Phoenix’s eyes were tired. Honestly, the fact that he was still awake after he’d nearly been blown up was proof of exactly how strong he was, but he didn’t have to be strong for me right now. He’d already done that by surviving. He’d already done that by staying.
He took in a slow breath, and the corner of his mouth twitched in amusement. “Not tonight.”
“Not tonight.” I repeated his words and couldn’t stop the laugh that followed—it ached in my chest, feeling wrong after the way my entire world had nearly burned down earlier. I ignored the pain and settled into the feeling of warmth that the sound tried to evoke. It was easier.
And it was better than the low groan that pooled from Phoenix’s chest when I poured the alcohol into his wounds again and watched blood soak into the sheets beneath him.