“I, uh, I think we need to pull the metal out…” I said, hesitantly, and Wesley met my gaze across Cole's body, giving me a tight nod.
“Shit,” Caleb swore. “We have company.”
Glancing up, I realized that of course an exploding car bomb on a residential street in Manhattan would attract attention. Caleb and River both scrambled to their feet and began herding the spectators away from us, leaving Austin and Wesley to assist me.
“Ready?” Wesley asked, and I hesitated a moment, my hands trembling like crazy. I looked back down at Cole to check that he was ready, but his lids had dropped closed. We were running out of time.
“When this piece comes out, you will have to do your thing fast. Understand?” Austin asked me in a level voice, but I could hear the thread of tension. Nodding tightly, I positioned my hands near the entry point, knowing it would start gushing blood the second the obstruction was gone.
Okay, you can do this, Kit. You've done it before, so it's just the same thing. Stay calm.
Nodding again to Wesley, I met his eyes so he knew I was ready. He pulled hard on the metal. It slid free with a sickening noise, and I immediately clamped my hands over the gaping wound.
Earlier in the day, when Austin had been drilling me about what might have triggered the healing, I had stubbornly refused to examine my actions any closer, but thoughts had been rolling around in my head ever since. I thought I knew what it was that had triggered it, and it wasn't desperation.
“Come on,” I murmured, taking slow breaths to calm myself down and thinking happy thoughts about Cole. Back in Nevada when Vali had been dying, it hadn't been until I had all but given up that the magic began working. I had been lying there thinking about how he had saved my life so many times already and how grateful I was, and I was convinced now that it was those positive emotions that had triggered the healing.
“Kit…” Wesley's voice interrupted my thoughts, dragging me back to the present.
“Quiet,” I shushed. “I think I have this.” My palms were tingling in a magic-ish sort of way. Not that it was an easily identifiable sensation, but it was somewhat similar to the feeling of my own body healing. Except when I had healed Vali, it had been hot, burning hot according to him. This felt cold. Really cold.
Blood was running freely between my fingers now, so there was no time to waste worrying about why it felt so different. Closing my eyes tight to the chaos around me, I cast my mind back to all the times Cole had made me feel safe, protected, cared for. The cold in my hands escalated to the point where my joints were hurting, like I had been playing in the snow with no gloves on.
For a few tense moments, nothing seemed to happen. The boys remained silent, and I could dimly hear the spectators being herded away from us by River and Caleb. Then all of a sudden, Cole screamed.
The sound of his scream ripped through the quiet around us, and his eyes snapped open to meet my startled gaze. Gasping, I very nearly dropped my hands from his throat when I saw the raw pain shining back at me from the gray depths of his eyes. The cold in my hands reminded me to keep going, though. He wasn't fully healed yet. Even when I could see the flesh was knitted back together and his skin unblemished, the cold still didn't let up for a little while longer, and I wondered if it was finding other injuries to heal as well.
When my hands finally warmed again, Cole was panting hard and blinking at me with a terrifying look on his face, and the breath caught in my throat. Abruptly, he sat up and reached for my face, but I was already blacking out.
Someone swore close to my ear as my body turned to jelly, and strong hands caught me rather than the hard concrete I had anticipated.
25
The world came back to me slowly as I regained consciousness. My head was pounding, and the room was spinning. Hard. Stomach lurching, I staggered up from the couch where I had been lying and just barely made it across the hall and into the half bath before losing all of the food I had just eaten at the diner.
“Kit, are you okay?” Wesley asked tentatively, cracking open the door just enough to make himself heard.
“I'm fine,” I croaked, sounding anything but. “I just need a moment, I think.” Remaining crouched on the floor near the toilet, I rested my head on my arms.
Why do I feel so awful?
“Is it okay to come in?” Wesley asked, the gentleman that he was.
“Yeah, of course.” I quickly flushed away the resurrection of my burger because no one needed to see that.
Wesley pushed the door open and squished himself inside the tiny room, sitting on the floor beside me and placing a damp cloth across my forehead. Raising my head up just enough to look at him, I gave a grateful smile.
“You're too sweet, you know that?” I teased, my voice still weak and scratchy.
His mouth turned down slightly. “Not really what every guy wants to be known as,” he muttered, mostly under his breath, and dropped eye contact with me.
“What, sweet?” I frowned. “Why not? There aren't enough sweet guys in this world.”
He snorted. “I think given the choice, most guys would rather be, I dunno, handsome or dangerous or sexy. Not sweet.” His cheeks were staining with color again, and I fought back a grin. He really is so sweet.
“Who says you can't be those things too?” I whispered, and his head snapped up in surprise. Just as he opened his mouth to respond, shouting from somewhere in my house reached our ears.
“What's going on out there?” I asked him, tipping my head to where the sound was coming from.
“Oh, ah, we have some unexpected company.” Wesley tugged at his floppy blond hair in his signature nervous gesture. Unable to help myself, I snagged his hand in mine and linked our fingers together.
“Let's go see what's going on then,” I suggested, and he pulled me up to my feet. “Thank you for checking on me. I don't know what came over me; this didn't happen when I healed Vali…”
Wesley shrugged and dodged my gaze again but let me keep hold of his hand as we headed back out to the kitchen, which was where the shouting seemed to be coming from.
A familiar voice was yelling, “—don't have to explain anything to you, little brother! Just let me see her, or I swear to God I will—”
“Will what?” Cole's dangerous growl cut the words off, and I feared for the safety of whomever he was speaking to. Wait, did the other guy just say “brother”?
I frowned at Wesley, who just shrugged again and led me through the swinging door to the kitchen where five angry, brooding men stood in various states of defensive posturing.
“Vali?” I exclaimed, and all eyes swung to me. “What the fuck?”
“Eloquent,” Caleb snickered from where he was perched on the kitchen counter, “but sums up the question we were all just asking. What. The. Fuck?” He turned a sharp glare on the Romanian intruder, and Austin made a noise of support.