Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 49385 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49385 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
“Text when you get home,” Amelia says through the window. “I mean it. Lucas, if she tries to assemble anything, confiscate her Allen wrenches.”
“Copy,” I say.
“I’m fine,” Mel protests weakly, then winces when a small tightness rolls under her palm. “Mostly fine.”
“Feet up,” I remind her, adjusting the seat back a notch. “Orders.”
We pull away from the curb. ER lights shrink in the rearview. The heater kicks on and the car fills with warm air and leftover adrenaline. Street lamps paint gold stripes across her face as we glide through town.
For two blocks, I let the quiet sit. She stares out the window, thumb tracing the edge of the discharge paperwork. Her other hand is on her belly, rubbing absent circles the way you do when you’re telling someone who can’t hear you that everything’s okay.
I clear my throat. The question has been ricocheting inside my skull since the moment I saw her in the store. It’s none of my business… except it is, in the parts of me that won’t obey the memo.
“Where’s Freddy?” I ask, keeping my voice even. “Why wasn’t he at the hospital?”
Silence. If I’d asked anything else, she’d have answered by now. She doesn’t pretend not to hear me. She just watches our reflections swim along the shop windows like she’s reading closed captions in her head.
Finally, she turns, meets my eyes head-on. No flinch. No flirty dodge. Just honest fatigue and a flash of… shame? fear? “He—” She stops, swallows. “Freddy’s not great in emergencies.”
It lands wrong. Not because it couldn’t be true—lots of people fold under pressure—but because it doesn’t match any of the other data points. My jaw ticks. “He had time between Dragon Garden and triage,” I say quietly. “Plenty of time to get to you.”
“I didn’t call him,” she says, so soft I almost miss it under the fan’s hum.
“Why not?”
Another long beat. We pass the coffee shop where I first saw her yesterday. The sign glows warm, the door swinging open and shut for people whose lives are smaller and bigger than ours in all the normal ways. She watches it go by.
“Because,” she says finally, exhale audible, “sometimes uncomplicated is just another word for unavailable.”
I digest that. It doesn’t answer the question, not really. It answers a better one.
“Mel,” I say, picking my words carefully. “If you need me to back off, I’ll back off. But I’m not going to pretend I didn’t notice there’s no record of a Freddy that intersects with your life.”
Her head snaps, surprise widening her eyes. “You… searched me?”
“Public records,” I say. “Tags. Nothing invasive.” I pause. “Occupational hazard.”
She makes a sound between a laugh and a groan. “Of course you did.”
We hit a red light. The SUV idles. I turn, giving her my full attention the way I would on a detail when a principal is about to tell me the thing that changes the whole op. “If you tell me to drop it, I will. But I don’t want to operate on bad intel. It gets people hurt.”
She stares at the dash, then back at me. Whatever she decides lands in her eyes before it hits her mouth. She opens her lips—then the light flips green and a horn taps behind us.
“Home first,” I say, easing forward. “Then we can have hard conversations on a couch like civilized people.”
She huffs a laugh, tension cracking a shade. “Fine. But only if you bring me the lo mein we abandoned.”
“Already on it. Dragon Garden’s delivering,” I say.
Her smile is small but real. “Show-off.”
I take the turn toward her building, scan the lot, file plate numbers without thinking. Snow feathers the windshield, and the wipers whisper. I don’t know what she’s going to say in ten minutes. I don’t know if I’ll like it. I do know two things with the clarity that only drops into place during a crisis or a dawn stakeout:
She shouldn’t be carrying this alone.
And I’m done pretending uncomplicated is the same as good.
8
Melanie
I unlock my apartment and push the door open with my hip, and suddenly there’s Lucas—in my space—all height and quiet, taking everything in with that scan he does. It’s not nosy. It’s… professional. Door swing, sightlines, windows, the rug that always tries to trip you. His gaze skips over the gallery wall (film shots, messy frames), the plant I forgot to water (sorry, Fern-ando), the half-folded laundry on a chair, the brand-new crib instructions still on the coffee table like the aftermath of a tiny hurricane.
It’s exactly the scene I’ve replayed in my head a hundred ways since March—him here, me here—except the version in my head didn’t include hospital bracelets and discharge paperwork and my heart ricocheting around my ribs like a pinball.
“Shoes off?” he asks, hovering by the entry like he’s trying not to creak on anything important.