• • •
"It's just a deep graze, but it needs stitches," Elodie said a few minutes later, when we'd all calmed down enough to think. She was examining my shoulder. "One of us can do the stitches, but we need supplies . . . Mariam, do you know anyone who works at a doctor's office?"
Mariam's eyes were huge in the rearview mirror, but she was still driving. "My friend's brother cleans the floors at an office of a . . . a doctor for the skin?"
"A dermatologist. Perfect. The office will be closed-can he get us in? We'll pay him a lot of money, and I promise he won't get in trouble."
After making a short phone call, Mariam steered us off the freeway.
We huddled into a small, dim exam room at the dermatologist's office. Elodie injected my shoulder with a numbing solution, and then left Jack to clean it and stitch it up while she and Stellan went outside to talk to a certainly traumatized Mariam and probably to have a long-overdue conversation themselves. As much as we'd been at each other's throats since Jerusalem, the past couple hours had begun to knit the four of us back together.
I stared up at the dark wall, decorated with curling posters showing the stages of skin cancer. Jack closed the door, crossed the room to where I sat on the exam table in a circle of light, and pulled me into a careful but bruisingly tight hug. I hugged him back with one arm, burying my face in his shoulder. "Are you okay?" I murmured.
He pulled away. "Am I okay? You're the one who's been shot."
"I know, but you-" He'd just killed someone he'd been charged with protecting his whole life. He seemed strangely calm. It probably hadn't sunk in yet.
"Yes, well."
I glanced down at where his hands were still resting on my waist. He did, too. He cleared his throat and let go of me, picking up the needle he'd already prepared for my shoulder. I felt a tug as he put in the first stitch, and looked down at my shoulder, watching him loop it through my skin and tie it off. I never thought I'd be able to watch something like that without it bothering me. I never thought I'd be comfortable with a lot of the things I did now.
"Avery," Jack said quietly, "he's alive."
It took me a second to realize he was talking about Fitz. The feeling of something good happening wasn't one I was used to anymore. I was having a hard time wrapping my head around it, especially since being happy about anything felt wrong when so much was still grim. Fitz was alive, but he'd been being tortured. I'd just seen my half brother killed. My mom was still dead. The juxtaposition of emotions was enough to make my head spin. "Yeah."
"We can get him out."
"I know. We thought for so long-"
Jack nodded and threaded the needle again. "It's like . . . suddenly I don't even care that he's Order." He paused, and I could see him judging my reaction. I just sat quietly and let him go on. "I still don't like that he's lied to us, the same as with Elodie. But . . . I thought I'd gotten him killed. I thought I'd gotten Oliver Saxon killed. I'd forgotten how it was not to feel so terribly guilty about those things."
"Jack-" I reached out for him, and he shook his head, pulling the thread through my skin with a tug.
I sat back down and watched him string another piece of thread. I couldn't help but think about the first time he'd done something like this, when we'd practically just met, and I'd been stabbed at Prada. I let myself look at him like I had then: this boy who was almost intimidatingly gorgeous, but also quiet and kind. Who, for some reason, had taken an interest in me. Now he was just as handsome as ever, his dark hair still damp from the tunnels, the same intensity burning in his gray eyes, his drying T-shirt clinging to him.
Jack looked up to find me watching him. His eyes searched mine. I had the sudden feeling that this was supposed to be the part of the story where I realized I was wrong, and everything was forgiven. Where, after detours, Jack and I found our way back into each other's arms, where we realized we were meant to be all along.
"Can I tell you something?" He finished the stitch and set the needle down on the tray. When he turned back to me, there was a calm on his face I'd never seen. "I feel better about Fitz, and about Oliver. I still feel terribly guilty about what I did to you."
"Jack-"
He shook his head. "You don't need to do that. We both know it was bad. We both know you haven't entirely forgiven me, and I understand why. I'd like to try to explain just a little. I wasn't lying when I said that it was all for you. I thought going to the Saxons like that was the best way to keep you safe."