Thin Lines (The Child Thief #3)(44)

He put out a hand and grasped my shoulder to stop the flood of words. “Robin. It’s probably just a bruise, but it could also get a lot worse. You were hit by a bullet, after all. And if we’re going to be doing what I think we’re going to be doing tomorrow, I can’t have you slowing us down. We’ve got to get your pants off so I can have a look at your leg and see how bad it actually is.”

“Well, I’ve heard a lot of pickup lines, but I’ve definitely never heard that one before,” Nelson said, appearing on my other side and giving Jace a look that said she both felt sorry for him and was going to poke fun at him.

I knew that look. She’d used it on Ant and Abe more times than I could count. Right now, I had a feeling she was feeling sorry for Jace for the same reason I felt sorry for all of us: we were exhausted. And yet here Jace was, trying to be responsible and levelheaded about everything, spouting off orders right and left and being the guy everyone could depend on to figure things out.

But he’d been through the same week I had, running from the Authority, getting into scrape after scrape, and watching people he knew and cared for get hurt and captured. He’d just been shot at by the Authority, and, I suddenly remembered, had actually gone down himself in that clearing back there, when the Authority first caught up to us.

“Wait a minute,” I snapped, my memory suddenly coming back to me. “What happened to you back in the field? You were running right next to me, and then you just disappeared. I went flying through the air, and I couldn’t find you, but you…” I started running my hands uselessly up and down his arms and torso, trying to find a wound, trying to remember whether he’d been limping. Had he been shot? Had he come this entire way with a bullet hole somewhere in his body? How was that even possible?

I’d come to think of him as superhuman, but this was too much. If he was wounded and hadn’t told anyone…

He grabbed at my hands and held them roughly to his chest. “I wasn’t shot,” he said bluntly. “And that tickles.”

“If you weren’t shot, then what the hell happened?” I asked, refusing to be sidetracked.

He shrugged. “They shot at me, yeah. The bullet grazed my hip, but…” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, turning it to me so I could see the shattered screen. “Saved by technology, I guess,” he said grimly. “The bullet must have hit the phone in my pocket and skidded along it, then flown off into the bushes. I felt the blow, but it was only enough to knock me down. And then, of course, the ground exploded. But it wasn’t enough to stop me.”

I gaped at him for a moment, and then he tore through my shock and pointed back at my leg. “Your leg is hurt,” he snapped. “Pants off. Now.”

“Okay, hero,” Nelson said through gritted teeth. “You’ve just told us you’ve been shot, and yet it’s more important to see to Robin’s leg? Who are you kidding?”

He rounded on her, angry, and said, “I wasn’t shot. The phone was. And Robin’s more important.”

And at that moment, I realized that seeing me hurting was probably affecting Jace the same way that seeing him hurting would have affected me. The idea that someone had shot at him—and connected, even if it didn’t actually get him in the body—was making me break in a way I hadn’t thought I could still break, and now that I looked closely into Jace’s eyes, I could see the worry and fear hovering there. As well as the mask he was carefully pulling over those emotions, so that he could keep right on being everyone’s rock.

He was intentionally tamping down his own feelings so that everyone else could keep depending on him.

At that thought, my heart felt like it grew ten sizes, and I held my arms out to him, inviting him in for the hug he so obviously needed—and the one that he wasn’t going to ask for, because it might have indicated weakness. He moved into my arms and tucked his nose into my neck, and stayed there while I rubbed his back and held him. I didn’t say anything, but I did notice that Nelson rose quietly and went deeper into the cave to rummage through the boxes for something that I doubted she actually needed, to give us a moment. I looked over toward Ant, Abe, and Jackie, and met Jackie’s eyes wordlessly, and we shared a long look that acknowledged the things that had happened, and how frightened we actually were.

How terrified we were.

But how hard we were going to keep fighting. Because of these people right here, and what they’d come to mean to us. And because this—the family we had built, and the families we would build in the future—were worth fighting for.

“You okay?” I finally asked, figuring we’d probably used up our quota of cuddling time, given everything else we had to do.

“Exhausted,” he breathed, sitting up and giving me a smile. “But much better now. Thank you.”

I shrugged, embarrassed for reasons I didn’t care to admit at having been so close to him, and having shown so much affection in such a public way. “It was just a hug,” I said, staring at the ground.

He reached out and threaded his fingers through mine. “And it meant the world to me,” he said quietly. Then I felt his grip grow firmer, and his voice became more solid. “Now, we really have to get a look at that leg. Nelson?” he called.

She appeared as if she’d been waiting for his call. She’d gone through the clothes I’d brought and picked out a pair of shorts.