Page 125 of The ARC Unit: Breach

“No.”

Jackal did not even look toward him. “I’m sitting.”

“You’re not cleaning a weapon on pain medication.”

“I’m looking at it.”

“You can look at it from across the room.”

Jackal rested one hand over his chest. “Wow, so this is it. You all officially hate me.”

Hawk took the case back without waiting for the argument to finish.

“Two-timing bird,” Jackal muttered.

Hawk carried it toward the equipment room. “I’m not the one stabbed.”

Jackal’s eyes followed him and then moved toward Wolf.

The easy expression faded.

For a few seconds, neither man said anything. Raven and I were still at the operations table, close enough that pretending not to hear would have been more obvious than simply continuing our work. Bear stayed in the kitchen while Viper sat in the chair beside the couch, one ankle resting on the opposite knee.

Jackal looked toward the floor. “You got a minute?”

Wolf stopped beside the table and nodded.

Jackal did not ask him to go somewhere private. Maybe walking to another room was more effort than he felt like spending, or maybe the part of the conversation that warranted that had already happened months before I arrived. He waited until Hawk came back and settled near Viper, then looked at Wolf again.

“What happened that night. It was personal.”

My hands stopped above the keyboard.

“I know.”

Jackal’s mouth tightened. “I know you know.”

When I first arrived, I would have expected Wolf to push back simply because someone had called him out in front of the team. Instead, he nodded.

“You’re right.”

Jackal rubbed his thumb along the side of the water. “I should’ve kept it about what you did instead of making it about whatever I brought into it.”

“You were right about what I did.”

Jackal looked up.

Wolf continued in the same controlled tone. “You asked whether she said yes. She didn’t. Everything after that was on me.”

Heat rose under my skin as I listened to the conversation happen with me sitting close enough to be part of it, while neither man turned me into an object they were arguing over again.

Jackal looked toward me then, only briefly, before returning to Wolf. “Good. Because I really don’t want to get stabbed every time we have unresolved shit.”

The line was ridiculous enough that Bear made a tired sound from the kitchen. Jackal’s mouth moved at one corner and the tension in his shoulders finally loosened.

Wolf looked down at him. “You planning to use the stabbing for leverage now?”

“Absolutely.”