“You think I like it?”

“I don’t know what you like.”

“Shut up!” I laughed and rolled my head to glance from one to the other. “I know what you both like.”

“Fuck!” Jace threw his arms into the air, then eyed me desperately until Marc gripped my chin and turned my face toward him.

“What does that mean?”

I laughed again, but then suddenly I was crying, and I don’t know how that happened.

“Let go of her,” Jace growled. “She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

“Yes, I do.” I jerked my chin from Marc’s hand and stared up at him, wishing I could wipe the stupid tears trailing down the sides of my face. “You both like me, though I can’t figure out why right now.”

Marc relaxed, and Jace exhaled slowly in relief. What had he thought I was going to say? I was drunk, not stupid! “Okay, now that that’s out in the open, please be quiet and let Marc finish sewing you up.”

Another sharp point of pain pierced my arm with the next stitch, and I bit my lip.

“That was never exactly top secret,” Marc said as the thread tugged at my flesh. “Everyone knows about Jace’s little crush.”

Jace went stiff on my right.

“Not everybody…” I was horrified to hear myself say. Had Jace given me tequila or fucking truth serum? He squeezed my elbow, desperate to shut me up, and I smiled at him in sympathy. “I know. It’s the tequila.” Marc glanced first at me, then at Jace in confusion. Like I wasn’t making sense! “Don’t you remember what happened last time I had too much tequila?”

Damn it! Okay, maybe I was drunk and stupid…

Marc laughed, and Jace froze, until Marc turned back to the needle. “Now, that was a hell of a night!”

Jace scowled at me, and suddenly I remembered that tequila had given them both a chance to get back into my…life. And with that realization, I silently vowed to keep my mouth shut until the alcohol had left my system.

Fortunately, without my own voice to keep me awake, I fell asleep in spite of the repeated, prickling pain in my left arm. Sometime later, I woke up on the hotel bed, still wrapped in the towel. My left arm was encased in sterile gauze, which gave off an unfamiliar chemical scent. My right arm was bare and stretched out across the mattress. I was grouchy, in pain, and distressingly sober.

And alone. Or so I thought until I heard the soft rumble of male voices from just outside the window, where two familiar silhouettes stood side by side. “Damn it, Jace, this is suicide. There’s no way we’ll make it out of the territory with Lance.”

“If we don’t try, we’re dead. And so’s Kaci. And Calvin will wind up with Faythe.”

“He will, anyway, if this goes wrong,” Marc growled.

Jace’s shadow shrugged beyond the thin curtains. “She’s willing to take that chance for Kaci. For all of us.”