Halley
I stared down at Jake's weak body and reached out for the umpteenth time to touch his hand, hoping that those gentle touches would eventually ground him and bring him back to the present.
Hospitals had always terrified me, from the time that my grandparents had died when I was a kid. There was always that smell to them, and that look that doctors gave you when there was nothing more that they could do.
That look may not have been directed towards me this time, when it was Jake who was there, lying limp against their pale green sheets, but that didn't make me feel any better. Every time I saw the doctor, I expected to see one of those looks.
Fortunately, it didn't come.
I was surprised, that day, to see the way his eyes flickered, as though they might open at any second. Of course, he had only been shot in the leg during some sort of mission for the Devil's Route—but I didn’t really know what he'd been up to. And with the way that he'd been lying there for the past few days, dead to the world, I kind of thought that … well...
And the color of his eyes! The thing was, he'd been out for so long now that I almost thought I had forgotten the peculiar shade of green that overcame his eyes most of the time. I thought I had forgotten.
But it didn't matter now. What mattered was that both Max and he were in the hospital, with injuries of varying severity.
“What are you thinking about?” Jake asked suddenly, and my hand stilled against his.
I jolted as though he had shocked me. “I didn't realize you were awake,” I said in surprise.
“I didn't think I would be,” Jake admitted to me. He shook his head. “Where's Frank? Is he—”
But before he could even finish the question, I was shaking my head, tears standing in the corners of my eyes. “I'm so sorry,” I said, my voice sounding raw and pained. “I'm so, so sorry.”
Jake held up a hand to interrupt me. “Where is Frank?” he asked. It was clearly the only thing that he could think about, and he had to have the answer to that question before he heard anything else.
I settled back in the chair and closed my eyes. “I'm sorry, Jake,” I said, and I was sure he could see the tears standing in the corners of my eyes. “Frank … well, with that bullet to the stomach, it's a surprise that he survived long enough to even make it to the hospital. But there was nothing more the doctors could do.”
Jake stilled, staring up at me, but I couldn't meet his heartbroken gaze. “I was there, though,” Jake said. “I mean, I saw him get shot, but—”
“Jake, you couldn't help him,” I said. “I mean, sure, you got him out of there. But that doesn't mean you can save a man who has been...” I trailed off, remembering the way Jake's hands had been smeared with blood when I'd finally seen him again, despite the nurse's best efforts to clean him off. “You did everything you could.”
“No,” Jake said hoarsely. “No, I can't believe it. I don’t believe it. I refuse to believe it.”
“Don't worry, though,” I said, trying to make my voice as soothing as I could. “We followed his funeral instructions to the letter, everything that was laid out in his will. And Max is running the club right now, making sure that everything’s fine.”
“It's Max's fault that we're in this mess to start with,” Jake growled, trying to sit up. “And it's his mess.”
“Easy there,” I said, catching his shoulder and pushing him back down onto the bed. “Relax, just relax. Jake, I know that this is hard for you.”
“Hard for me,” he snorted. “Jesus fucking Christ, woman, you think this is just 'hard' for me? This is—”
“I know,” I interrupted, my voice still in the same falsely soothing tone as before. “But Jake—”
“I'm going to kill that fucker,” Jake vowed. He shook his head when I opened my mouth to even consider arguing with him. “No,” he said firmly. “Look, Halley, I know that you have your personal things—your morals and your etiquette and whatever else, but I'm going to kill that fucker. For what he's done to you, for what he's done to Frank, for what he's done to the Devil's Route. He doesn't deserve to—”
“What are you, God?” I scoffed. “You don't have any right to go on making decisions about who lives or who dies.”
I was right, and Jake knew that. He stared at me for a long moment, and this time, I could see tears forming in his eyes. Then, he finally turned his eyes away from me, and I could see him weep.