Chapter Twenty

Jeni didn't know what day it was.

It was dark when Coop pulled onto the O'Kane compound, dark when Dylan whisked Hawk and Markovic both off to his underground hospital in Sector Three. She started to follow before remembering that she'd used her safe word. Her collar was in the pocket of her filthy jeans, and she'd smashed Hawk's heart.

She stayed put. People surrounded her, faces she knew, faces she loved—a tearful Lex, a concerned Ace, Dallas wearing his best stern-but-worried expression. But none of it seemed real. It was all far away, happening to someone else. Because she'd given up on this, on ever seeing home or these people again. It was the price she'd been willing to pay for Hawk's life, something she'd already accepted as fact.

And yet.

She sat in the conference room, answering questions, and she understood. It would have been irresponsible of them not to debrief her. She didn't flinch, even when Lex dropped her head to the table and sobbed. Even when Dallas's voice broke. Jeni answered his questions, and watched the window behind him slowly lighten with the growing dawn.

And she still didn't know what day it was.

By the time Ace took her by the arm and led her across the courtyard, the sun was peeking up over the eastern horizon. As if nothing had changed, and this was any other day.

“Jeni.” Gia was waiting for them, her eyes shining with unshed tears. Her arms trembled as she wrapped them around Jeni and held her tight.

Jeni stood there, breathing in the familiar scent of Gia's perfume. Underneath it, the scents of blood and death lingered. “I need a shower.”

“I know.” Gia drew her deeper into Ace's bedroom. Ace followed, another familiar presence at her back. “Rachel's on her way back with food and a med kit. Are you hurt anywhere?”

Everywhere. She didn't realize she'd said it aloud until Ace and Gia traded a serious look. “No, I'm not hurt.”

“We'll check anyway,” Ace said soothingly, gathering her tangled hair back from her face. “We're gonna get these clothes off, okay? And maybe light them on fire.”

She kicked off her shoes as they tried to tug her shirt over her head. Her shoulder ached where she'd smashed it against the frame of Hawk's car, but she lifted her arms anyway.

Gia pulled at her jeans, then stilled. Her gaze flew to Jeni's naked throat as she drew the collar out of her pocket. “What should I do with this?”

“I don't—” Thinking about it threatened to splinter Jeni's apathy. “Can you just put it somewhere?”

“I got it.” Ace took it and tossed it onto the table. The metal medallion clinked on the wood, and the tiny sound echoed in Jeni's head as Gia and Ace helped her step out of her jeans and led her toward the open shower.

Steam already poured from it. Ace coaxed her in and climbed in after her, still fully clothed, ignoring the water that soaked through his T-shirt and jeans. “Baby girl, you are all-over bruises. Do you need some painkillers?”

For a moment, she thought about it. If they drugged her up, she wouldn't have to worry about anything. She wouldn't have to think. But she'd never used that particular escape, and doing it now seemed...treacherous. Like a narrow path with no place to turn around. “No.”

“All right.” He tapped her shoulder gently. “Turn around, honey.”

When her hair was wet, he started to wash it. The shampoo was the stuff Rachel always used, thick and coconut-scented, and Ace worked it through Jeni's hair carefully, avoiding the sore spot on her temple.

She must have hit her head, too, but she couldn't remember when or how.

“What day is it?” she asked as he steered her under the hot spray again.

“What day?” Ace frowned as he drew his fingers through her hair. “Tuesday.”

Noah had cracked the city's encryption on Sunday. She and Hawk had left for the farm in Six that evening. It had only been one day—one long, interminable fucking day—

It didn't seem possible that so many things could change in one day. People were dead, an entire sector destroyed, the future she thought she held in the palm of her hand, in her heart, gone.

In one fucking day.

The first sob wrenched free of her aching throat like a bullet. She couldn't hold it back, even when Ace gathered her close with a look of alarm. She slumped against him as the dam broke, sob after sob, coming faster and faster until her knees gave way.

Hawk woke up in a hospital bed.

A machine beside him beeped softly. A bag hung from the side of it, with a tube leading to an IV attached to his arm. His clothes were gone, replaced by thick bandages around his waist and ribs and another around his arm. He drew his other arm out from beneath the pristine white sheet and stared at the bruises, scrapes, and the tape wrapped around two of his fingers.

“We almost lost you,” a hoarse voice said next to him.

Hawk turned his head, and Alya's face swam into focus. She looked tired, her eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot, her hair scraped back from her sorrow-lined face in a tight knot. She gripped his hand and guided it back to the bed. “You stay still until Dylan comes back around to check on you.”

It was so bossy, so motherly, he couldn't stop a tired smile. “Yes, ma'am.”

“Don't you yes ma'am me,” she retorted, her sharp tone in contrast to the gentle hand she laid against his cheek. “You came in here with your brain bleeding and three of your ribs broken. The doctor said it's a miracle you don't have a punctured lung.”

He didn't? Funny, considering how hard it was to breathe. “Is Jeni okay?”

Alya's expression softened. “Yes. I haven't seen her, but Lex has been keeping me updated. She has some bumps and bruises from the crash, but otherwise—”

“The crash.” Hawk swallowed and squeezed his eyes shut. “God, I'm sorry. You trusted me with Luna—”

“Shh.” His mother stroked his hair, and a memory stirred. An early one, blurry around the edges—the summer a fever had swept across the farms. He'd been four or five years old, and so sick, but his father had reserved the medication for the men and boys strong enough to work the crops. Alya had held Hawk in her arms, rocking him through the tremors, her fingers soft and cool on his forehead as she sang under her breath.

She'd barely been Luna's age.

“Big John sent out a search party the first morning,” she said softly. “They found your car and hauled it back. And...her.”

“Jeni said it was fast. That she wasn't in pain.”

Alya stroked his hair again, her fingers trembling. “We're planning a memorial for her and Shipp next week at the new farm. He'd want to feel like he was there with us, starting our new lives.”

Hawk swallowed another lump. “Next week?”

“So you and Jeni are recovered enough to come.”

Oh God, she didn't know. Of course she didn't fucking know. Alya could stare at the bruises and the lacerations, number his broken bones, know about his bleeding brain, but the worst injury, the one that might never heal…

Dylan wouldn't have found his broken heart on any of the scans.

“Hawk?”

He had to look at her. He opened his eyes, and the worry creasing her brow broke his heart all over again. She'd watched the man she loved get shot down in front of her, had held his bleeding body in her arms.

Jeni was still alive. Even if Hawk never got to touch her, even if he never got to hold her, she was safe. Whole.

And Alya's sympathy would kill him.

“It's nothing,” he choked out. “We just—we had a fight.”

“What, baby?”

Maybe it would be easier to admit it because Alya had always been more like a fond, easily exasperated older sister than a mother. Someone not so much older than him, who knew what it was like to grow up hard and not understand all the rules about love. “We broke each other. There was a moment…”

The horror of it came rushing back. The sick helplessness. Alya squeezed his hand tight and forced him to look at her. “What moment?”

She traded her life for mine. He couldn't get the words out. Every time he tried, he saw Shipp on the ground, heard Alya's scream.

He couldn't do this to her.

“Hawk.” Her voice was as steady and unwavering as her grip. “I don't know what happened between you, but I know about regret.”

“Alya—”

“Listen to me.” She leaned closer, her eyes bright. “Shipp tried to love me for years. I beat him back with everything inside me because I was scared of letting anyone close. And those are years I'll never get back, baby. Years I wasted, because I didn't know how few we'd have.”

His eyes stung. “Ma—”

“Don't interrupt me.” Her grip tightened until his hand ached. “You take everything on yourself, Hawk. That fool girl's choice to stay with her bastard husband, Luna's choice to run off after Royce's toy. Even all the goddamn mistakes I made with you. You carry our mistakes like you made them happen.”

The pain in his chest wasn't from the beating. It was a torrent of tears, lodged deep and fighting its way up. “I wanted to protect you. All of you.”

“That's not a compliment, baby.” She touched his cheek, her eyes swimming. “A little bit is fine. But when you take it too far—it's just another way to make us less than human.”

He swallowed around the knife in his throat. “I'm not trying to do that.”

“We know,” she whispered. “It's why we keep letting you do it. But it's not good for us, and it's not good for you. And, Hawk—” Her tears spilled over. “You were a child. You couldn't have protected me. You shouldn't have had to. It was my job to get you the hell out of that nightmare.”

Hawk wiped the tears from her cheek. “You were a kid, too.”

“Goddammit, Hawk, stop forgiving me,” she growled, sounding so exasperated that Hawk laughed, and then she was laughing, too, laughing through the tears as he pulled her into a hug that dislodged the sensor on his finger and set the machine behind him off into alarmed screeching.

The confused nurse found them like that—Hawk's laughter edged with hysteria, Alya's with tears...but laughing.

It didn't heal his heart. That was still shredded in his chest, and would be until he saw Jeni.

But it was a start.