Chapter 20
“Pav. We need to move.”
Drone.
Someone had been behind that camera. And even though the drone was downed, they would know where.
Which meant they were coming.
Her gaze flicked to the shattered wreckage smoking in the snow, then to the trees. The forest pressed in—dense, silent, full of places to hide and nowhere to run if you were already marked.
Minutes?
Maybe less.
Pav lay in the snow at her knees. Blood threaded through his hair, crimson against his skin, running down into his collar. Scalp wounds bled like this. She knew that. It didn’t help.
He blinked, his eyes blank for a fraction of a second, then sharp. Focused. The soldier slamming back into place behind his eyes.
He pushed onto an elbow. Pain hit, flitting across his face but vanishing just as fast.
“I’m fine,” he muttered.
She bit down on a retort. “You’re bleeding from your head.”
“Scalp wounds always look worse than they really are.” He wiped blood from his eye.
She pressed her teeth together. “You don’t say.”
His gaze cut to hers—clearer now. Already moving past injury to function.
“I’ll decide what it is.” She pushed up to her feet, hands on her knees. “Can you move?”
“Sure.” He got up slowly, unsteady for half a second before he locked it down, his body snapping into alignment as if nothing had happened. Tendons stood proud in his neck.
Liar.
She stepped in under his good arm before he could argue, taking some of his weight across her shoulders. He resisted for half a beat, then let her.
“We’re moving,” she said, already turning them deeper into the trees.
Downhill. It was easier on compromised balance, faster if they had to run. She picked the line instinctively—a dense canopy with no clear aerial view.
His weight dragged at her side, but he fought it, his breathing measured as if he could bully his body into compliance.
She forced herself not to look up. Keep moving.
“There.” She jerked her head toward a cluster of dense trees, branches thick and snow-laden, a boulder anchoring one side. Far from perfect, but enough cover for her to work and get him packed up as quickly as possible.
She got him there and turned him, pressing him back against the rock. “Sit.”
“Harper—”
“Now.”
He dropped, back hitting the stone. His head tipped back, eyes closing for a second too long.
She pulled him forward and stripped the pack from his shoulders. She dropped to her knees in front of him and opened the med kit.
She held her hands out. Shaking. She scrubbed her hands over her face, blew out a breath.
In. Out.
She was a doctor.
This was what she did.
Except this wasn’t a patient.
This was Pav.
She tilted his head toward the thin light filtering from above.
The gash above his ear was messy, the edges ragged where the metal had caught him. It needed stitches. Imaging to check for fractures. A clean room. Better light.
She had trees, shaking hands, and whatever Pav had packed in a field kit designed for men who expected the worst.
It would have to be enough. Work with what you have.
“This needs stitches.”
“Then stitch it.”
“With what? My sparkling personality?”
He glanced at her sidelong. “In my med kit.”
She exhaled through her nose and dug through the kit. She found the suture pack tucked beneath the gauze.
She pressed her lips together as she irrigated the cut as best she could, cleaned the edges, and placed three quick interrupted stitches to keep it from reopening. It wasn’t pretty or perfect, but it was functional. She covered it with gauze and wrapped a bandage around his head for pressure.
He didn’t make a sound as she worked, his eyes fixed somewhere over her shoulder, like if he looked at her he might—
“How’s your vision? Any blurring? Double?”
“No.”
“Nausea?”
“No.”
“How many fingers?” She held up three.
“Three. Harper, I’m not concussed.”
“I’ll decide that, too.” She held his chin, tilted his face toward the light. Checked his pupils. Equal and reactive. That was something. “Follow my finger.” She tracked it left, right, up and down. His eyes tracked clean.
He endured it badly. Pav was not a man built to be assessed.
“You’ll live,” she said.
“I know.”
“You’re welcome, by the way.”
Something moved behind his expression—not the fury she’d seen at the cache. Something quieter. “Thank you.” His voice was rough. Like it cost him something he didn’t give lightly.
She looked away first. Busied herself repacking the gauze.
“Your shoulder.” Her gaze dropped to it. “It’s out.”
He sighed. “It’s fine.”
“It’s dislocated.”
She’d known since the moment she took his weight. The joint sat too far forward, the shoulder hanging low, his arm held tight against his body in that instinctive protective position that every dislocation patient adopted.
“I can still use it."
“You can’t. You’re guarding it and compensating with your right side, and you haven’t lifted it above chest height since you stood up. I need to put it back.”
She let him run the calculation—fight her, or let her do it.
His expression closed by degrees, but finally he shifted against the boulder, giving her access.
She worked the jacket off his injured side, easing the fabric over the shoulder with the care she’d use on a fracture patient. He helped with his good hand.
His breathing stayed too steady. Like he was forcing it.
Close now. Too close.
Her knees bracketed his thigh, her hands were on his arm, his body heat bleeding into hers through wet fabric and skin.
“Can you feel your fingers?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She pressed two fingers to his wrist. His pulse was strong. “Move them.”
He did, nostrils flaring.
Good enough to try, but not good enough to like it.
The shoulder was a mess. Swollen, dropped, the joint sitting too far forward beneath the skin. Anterior dislocation. She’d bet her medical license on it.
“Anterior dislocation. No obvious fracture, but I can’t be sure without imaging.” She sat back on her heels. “I need to reduce it. Here. Now. It’s going to hurt.”
“I know what it feels like.”
“I’m going to use external rotation,” she said. Doctor mode. Calm, clinical, the voice she used in the ER when she needed a patient to trust her. “I’m going to rotate the arm outward. Slowly. When the muscle releases, it’ll slide back in.”
“Just do it.”
She took his arm.
His eyes dropped to her hands. Tracking. Always tracking.
His skin was warm, the muscles rigid with pain and tension. She flexed his elbow, cradling the joint, one hand on his wrist, the other on his upper arm. She could feel the wrongness of the joint beneath her palm—the bone sitting where it shouldn’t, the soft tissue stretched and angry.
“Try to relax the muscles. I know that sounds impossible, but the more you tense—”
“Harper.”
“Right. Okay. Okay.”
She began the rotation. Slow and careful, his arm moving outward degree by degree, never forcing past the resistance.
His breathing changed.
Shorter. Harder. Controlled—until it wasn’t.
She kept going, willing the thing to give, knowing it would if she didn’t force it. “Almost there.”
The muscle spasm released. A subtle give, a shift in the tension under her hands. She rotated another degree, and the humeral head slid back into the socket with a deep, grinding clunk she felt through her palms.
Pav’s good hand slammed flat into the ground. His breath tore out of him. A sound dragged from somewhere behind his teeth—
His eyes squeezed shut, and the tendons in his neck stood out like cables.
“Fuck.” His breathing came in ragged pulls, his hand pressed flat against the ground, fingers white, every knuckle visible.
She held his arm steady, supporting the joint, giving it a moment to settle. Her thumb pressed into the inside of his wrist, his pulse hammering under the pad of her thumb.
“It’s in.” She checked his wrist again. “Fingers.”
He flexed them.
“Good.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I’m delighted. Don’t ruin it.” She cut a strip from one of the spare thermal layers and made a sling for his left arm before he objected.
When he opened his eyes again, the rawness was still there—pain stripping away whatever filter he normally kept between himself and the world. For a second his eyes were unguarded and it hit her somewhere beneath her ribs.
“You knew what you were doing.”
“I do occasionally.” Her smile was tired. “Don’t thank me yet. I need to check—”
Blood seeped through his fleece.
“Pav.” Her breath hitched.
“What?”
“You’re bleeding from somewhere else.”
He glanced down, then back at her. “It’s a scratch.”
She pushed the unzipped edge of his fleece aside. Beneath it, his shirt clung damply to his chest.
“I need to see it.”
He gave a clipped nod.
She unbuttoned only what she had to, keeping her hands steady because they were doctor’s hands and this was a wound. A short diagonal slash ran from his left pectoral across his ribs—shrapnel from the drone, hidden beneath his clothes until now.
The bruising from his cracked ribs lay beneath it, purple fading to yellow at the edges. And now this—a fresh wound scored across the old damage.
Superficial laceration, no muscle involvement. But the edges were dirty, and field-clean was not clean.
His skin was warm under her fingers, his heartbeat strong through the wall of his chest as she flushed the wound with the last of the antiseptic. He hissed, sharp, through his teeth. The first sound of pain he’d made.
“Sorry.”
“Stop apologizing, Harper.”
“Stop getting hurt.”
She rocked back on her heels to collect butterfly strips. She focused on the clinical work of closing the laceration, not the heat of him under her hands or the way his stomach tensed when her fingers brushed lower.
She taped the last strip. Smoothed it down. Her palm flat against his chest for a second too long. It would hold even if the conditions were less than ideal.
She pulled her hands back. “Tell me if the bleeding restarts.”
“Yes, doctor.”
Was there the faintest edge of humor in that?
She busied herself with the med kit so he wouldn’t see her face. “If you feel dizzy, nauseous, or your vision changes—”
“I’ll tell you. I’m fine, Harper. I’ve survived far worse.”
“Will you actually?”
A second passed. “Probably not.”
“At least you’re honest about being dishonest.”
His gaze shifted over her shoulder. “We should move.”