Page 227 of Immune

His arms loosen, not letting go, just giving me space to breathe if I need it. I don’t take the space. I can’t. Not yet. But the words do lodge somewhere ugly.

I looked for you.

Good for him. I spent six fucking years surviving the aftermath.

My chin remains hooked over his shoulder, eyes wide open. Over him, I can see the room. The red alarm continues to pulse over the white walls. A medic stands frozen with gauze in one hand. Valeria is watching from near the door, expressionunreadable but not completely untouched. Mercer looks as if he’s suddenly aged ten years in the last ten minutes.

Hale is staring at me.

At my hair.

At the hat on the floor.

At the shape I’ve stopped hiding.

Let him. Let him add it to his little internal report. Let him underline Omega or daughter or problem or whatever hell word makes men like him feel in control and organized.

Fletcher stands between Hale and us without making a whole show of it. Xeon has shifted to block the closest guard’s line of sight. Ewan’s face has gone pale, humor nonexistent and his headphones hanging uselessly from one hand.

Kaito is closest, still close to where I shoved away from him. Still not touching. Still watching me like he understands that the world just handed back a door and I don’t trust it not to slam on my fingers.

Maine’s chest hitches against mine.

He’s crying.

Quietly.

Badly.

Trying not to because he’s always been weird and stupid about being the older one of the two of us. I remember him at nineteen, shoving his cap onto my head and telling me to keep my hair covered, scent dead, and doors locked. I remember his mouth trembling when he thought I wasn’t looking. I remember the door closing after him. I remember hating the sound of it more than I hated anything for years after.

Now that door is open, and I hate that too.

My hands tighten in his jacket and he winces. I should let go, but I don’t. He doesn’t ask me to, either.

“I thought you were dead,” I say so quietly that it’ll be a miracle if he hears it. The words come muffled against hisshoulder. Not dramatically, and not accusing, just scraped from the deepest part of my soul and wiped clean.

Maine’s arms shake. “I know.”

No. No, he doesn’t get to say that, because he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know the townhouse that was left behind after him. He doesn't know Mom’s body in the bathroom hanging in a noose while she watched with cloudy eyes and a hungry jaw snapping for flesh to eat. He doesn’t know the sound she made when she turned against that rope. He doesn’t know the first night I slept under the kitchen table with a knife clutched in my hands and his hat tucked over my hair because those were the only instructions I had left.

He doesn’t know.

My throat closes, but the anger isn’t big yet. It’s not louder than the relief. It’s not stronger than the part of me that is currently trying to crawl inside his ribs and hide there.

It’s just a thin red crack under the flood, waiting for its moment.

Maine’s hand strokes once over my hair, then stops as if he remembers he has no right to soothe what he had a hand in breaking.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers brokenly.

That tiny crack widens and I squeeze my eyes closed.

Do not.

Don’t say that.

Don’t make it smaller with sorries.