He looks so angry that if there were nails to be chewed, he could do it. He lifts my head off the pillow of his thigh and rests me on the ground with my head upon a balled-up shirt. He places a blanket over me before he straightens. “Jax,” he growls.
“Sir,” Jax says by his side.
“Make sure she’s okay,” he orders.
“Yes, sir,” Jax says.
Trey doesn’t look at me as he moves away toward the exit again. I call out to him, “I’m sorry too.”
He whips around, looking like he has never been this angry in his entire life, not even when I put a znou near my ear in the Forest of O. “I didn’t apologize!” he barks in frustration.
“I know,” I say weakly, “but you’re going to get to the barn and you’re going to feel really bad about being a total knob knocker to me right now, and then you’re going to apologize to the future me that you know is there watching you. Err . . . or is she the past me now?”
He turns around abruptly, striding out of the tunnel and into the night.
Jax crouches down next to me. He checks my pulse the old-fashioned way: by holding my wrist. “That was a bit unnecessary,” he observes.
“This time,” I say in a way that lets him know I’m not above doing it again if any of them pushes me.
“Was it worth it, though? You stayed away way too long, Kricket. I thought you were going to stop breathing—so did Trey. If you gave it a few more fleats, you might not have been able to return to your body, even if you wanted to. It was that bad.”
“I had to make sure he wasn’t walking into anything,” I reply stubbornly.
“This is a gift for sure, Kricket,” Jax says quietly, examining my cheek. “But if you abuse it, it could become a curse—or your end.”
I drop my eyes from his.
“You may have a concussion, and this is going to bruise,” Jax says, rubbing his thumb gently over my swollen cheek.
“No it won’t,” I mutter. “Cut my hair.”
“Excuse me?” Jax asks, like he didn’t hear me right.
“Do you have some scissors?” I ask him.
“You want to cut your hair? Now?” He looks as if he thinks I’ve lost my mind.
When I nod, he gets up from the floor and goes to his medical pack. He comes back with a pair of very sharp scissors. I sit up, but I almost have to lie back down again from dizziness. It takes me a second to focus enough so that I can take the scissors from Jax’s grasp.
He’s gravely concerned about what I’m about to do. “Trey might get angry with me for letting you cut your hair. He seems to really like it the way it is. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“It’ll grow back.”
His anxiety grows as I put the blades to the back of my head and gather a large handful of my hair. “Sure it’ll grow back,” he argues, seeing how short I intend to cut it. “But wouldn’t it be better to wait until you can have a professional do it—you may not be happy with the results when you—”
I snip off a large section of my hair; Jax winces. As I pull my shorn locks away, they turn black and curl up into dust. New hair springs from my scalp, extending down my back to fall to about the same length as before. Jax’s mouth hangs open.
“I’m sort of a freak,” I explain with a grimace, but I can’t regret showing him because I immediately feel better. The dizziness is receding. He takes the scissors from my hand, using them to cut off another section of my hair. When it regrows, he cuts more off with the same result.
After a few minutes of cutting, Jax grasps my chin in his hands, turning my face so that he can get a better look at the bruise on my cheek—or should I say, the lack of a bruise on my face. It healed much faster than the ones I had before, probably because there’s only one this time and no broken ribs. “This is—this is—you are—”
“—monstrous,” I fill in the blank for him.
His grasp on my chin grows tighter. “No!” He sounds almost angry. “You are without a doubt the most amazing Etharian I’ve ever laid eyes upon.”
“Thanks, Jax.” I try to smile.
“You’re a genetic enigma.”
“That I am,” I agree. He lets go of my face, allowing me to stand with his hand beneath my elbow for support, but I don’t need it. I feel fine, just really thirsty. “Do you have some water, Jax?”
“I do. I’ll get it for you.” When he returns, he hands me the water canteen. We talk about the first time I had my hair cut on Earth, how my foster mother nearly lost her mind over it.