Page 34 of Threadbound

Don’t let them take me.

Bran couldn’t look at anyone but Jamie. Couldn’t make out words in the sounds they made.

He watched as Jamie’s already flushed cheeks darkened further. “Yeah. He’s—” Jamie swallowed, his eyes flicking down to Bran’s face. “My boyfriend.”

Bran wasn’t sure why that was so important, or what it meant, but the other humans started making softer sounds.

“Bran?”

He managed to focus on Jamie again, blinking to clear his vision.

“I’ll be right here. Okay?” Fingers closed around the hand on his unbroken arm and squeezed gently. “I’ll hold your hand the whole time, okay?”

Bran was still terrified, but Jamie’s hand, the softness of his skin, the strength of his fingers, somehow soothed away a little of the blinding terror.

Don’t leave me.

“I’m not going anywhere.” The fingers squeezed again, gently.

Chapter

Seventeen

Somehow, Jamie had managed to convince not only the EMTs—including one with a bloody nose thanks to a sharp kick from Bran—but also several nurses and a doctor that he should be allowed to stay with Bran while they stitched up his side, reset his arm and shoulder, and splinted up the arm before someone could come in to put it in a cast.

It probably helped that when they’d tried to take Bran to a room by himself, he’d had a complete meltdown, punched an orderly, and bled everywhere by thrashing until Jamie had shoved his way through the flailing limbs to grasp Bran’s face and yell his name.

And then he’d settled, the fingers of his good arm tight around Jamie’s wrist, his wide forest-green eyes locked on Jamie’s, pleading with him not to go.

Jamie had managed to convince Bran to let them hook him up to the machines that measured his pulse, his oxygen levels, and his blood pressure, but the least hint of any kind of drug—painkillers or tranquilizers—and the panic returned. Jamie made up something about drug allergies and bad previous experiences as a way to keep the doctors from trying to give Bran anything else, although one of the nurses seemed suspicious.

Jamie figured that they finally let it go because most people tried to get more drugs when they were lying about things in a hospital, rather than trying to keep from having to take them. That’s the way it had been in Tennessee, anyway, when his momma had taken him in for stitches or, once, a broken arm from losing a fight with Bill Eckel and getting shoved down the front steps.

His momma had pleaded with them for anything to help cut the pain—as an adult, Jamie knew that she’d been trying to make sure his crying wouldn’t make things worse. The hospital had refused, probably assuming she was either trying to keep them for herself or sell them. After they’d gotten home, without any medication, his momma had made him drink tea with enough whiskey to make him sleepy.

He wondered how hard it would be to give Bran enough Scotch to makehimsleepy. Jamie had a good half-bottle or so in his apartment… but he’d have to getbackto his apartment for that to be a solution.

At the moment, Bran was still awake. Although he hadn’t actually spoken to Jamie since the woman in the Fiat had called the ambulance, his eyes constantly flickered around the room, a frown creasing his forehead and his hand gripping Jamie’s tightly. He was curled on his side, the white of the bandaging on his other side stark against the blood and dirt and iodine staining his skin. The arm on that side of his body was broken in two places and had needed resetting and a splint—it was resting on a pillow awaiting a cast.

Jamie wasn’t sure whether Bran would currently categorize him as a good guy or a bad guy—he’d begged Jamie not to take him to a hospital, yet here they were, and it had been Jamie who’d asked the woman in the Fiat to call. But Jamie had also stayed with him, made sure nobody gave him any drugs, and had even come up with some bullshit religious reason why Brancouldn’t receive a blood or saline transfusion. Jamie had no idea why Bran kept refusing all types of treatment, but the panic he went through any time a needle or pill came anywhere near him was all Jamie needed to know.

So he’d tried, at least, to follow Bran’s wishes to an extent—and Bran had allowed the sutures to his side, the application of dressings, and the resetting of his arm and shoulder, and he hadn’t fussed when the doctor explained how they were going to put a cast on his arm, so all that seemed to be okay.

But Jamie still felt guilty as hell about being responsible for Bran being in the hospital in the first place. At least the UK had the National Health, which meant that—unlike in the US—Bran wasn’t going to get stuck with a massive sheaf of medical bills at the end of it. Thank goodness, as his mother had always said, for small favors.

Favors Jamie and his half-siblings had never had. When they’d refused treatment—or, rather, when their momma had—it had usually been because of the cost. But that also meant that Jamie knew a thing or two about recovering from a broken arm or a stitched-up wound without pain meds or follow-up appointments.

And that brought him to a new reason to worry.

Did Bran have someone who could take care of him? Help him as he recovered? And, if not, was Jamie willing tobethat someone?

The thought was, quite frankly, frightening. It wasn’t that he couldn’t physically help—Bran was small enough that Jamie could easily move him around—but he didn’t reallyknowBran, and injuries like the ones the smaller man was suffering were the kind of thing that were deeply personal. Bathing got harder. Hell, going to the bathroom got a lot harder with only one hand. To say nothing of cooking or cleaning or doing laundry…

Jamie didn’t know if Bran would want him doing all that stuff. Hell, Jamie didn’t even know where Bran lived, much less what his daily habits were.

Or if he even had somewhere to go, given the circumstances.

Jamie didn’t know anything about the three people who’d attacked Bran, other than the obvious fact that they were complete assholes. What if they were his roommates? Or his family? Maybe Brancouldn’tgo back to wherever he’d been living.