Page 62 of The Shape of my Scar
Chapter 30
One afternoon, Jac arrived.
Faolan had started slowly and painfully getting about with support. He had been avoiding her, she suspected.
He stood there with his eyes red and a box of her favourite biscuits.
He took one look at her in the bed and seemed to struggle to keep the tears in.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Jac,” she muttered.
She reached out with her one good arm and gave him a lopsided, awkward hug. “I’m alive. Don’t make a fuss.”
He hugged her tighter, sniffling. “You bloody maniac. You nearly died.”
“You kept me alive until help came. If we rescued those kids, it was worth it.”
“You’re the stupidest genius I’ve ever worked with.”
“I am not a genius; I just remember a lot of stuff,” she whispered.
Thane was there again—still not speaking, still not inside the room. But his eyes fixed on her and Jac like he was watchingsomething he didn’t quite understand…or didn’t like. The intensity in his stare only sharpened when she rested her head against Jac’s shoulder for a moment. When she looked up, it looked like he was about to come charging in before he changed his mind and stomped off.
Faolan wasn’t to know that later that day, Jac found himself cornered near the car park.
Thane stood just a little too close, towering over his smaller frame. His voice was low and tight. “You two…you’re close,” he ground out.
Jac raised a wary brow. “We’ve worked together for years. She’s like a sister to me.”
Thane’s eyes narrowed. “Right.”
Jac’s lips twitched. “Don’t worry. It’s not like that. I’m gay, mate.”
Thane’s face changed—surprise, followed by something like relief.
Jac leaned in a little, his tone cool. “If you care about her, then don’t mess this up. Because if you hurt her again, gay or not, I will make your life hell. You can’t treat her like before.”
Thane didn’t respond for a beat.
“You don’t know what you are talking about. I would tear my bloody heart out for her.”
Then he stepped back, nodded once, and disappeared down the hallway.
It started with the sound of metal.
A sharp clang, distant and echoing, like the slam of a weapon’s bolt.
Faolan was back there again. A dim hallway, the red carpet fraying underfoot. Cigarette smoke in the air and a man’s shadow stretching down the corridor toward her, long and slow and silent.
She was six.
Then twenty-six.
The sound of gunfire cracked through the dark like the shatter of plates across a kitchen floor.
Someone screamed. It was her voice. And then again, hoarser, shaped like the breath she had spent behind a muzzle or a hospital tube.
Someone gripped her arm. She jerked away. Pain lanced through her chest. Blood was on the walls
