Page 9 of His to Protect
“How was work?” she asked, nudging my arm.
“Busy.”
“That’s always your answer.”
“Because it’s always true.”
She studied me with those unnervingly perceptive eyes. "You look exhausted, Riv."
I didn’t answer.
"Stay home tomorrow," she said quietly.
"Can't."
"Won't," she corrected. "There's a significant difference."
The doorbell rang before I could respond. We ate pizza in comfortable silence while Emma scrolled through her phone, occasionally showing me funny posts I didn't understand and didn't particularly want explained.
This was enough. Emma was alive, recovering, thriving against all odds.
She was okay. That had to be enough.
After she went to bed, I stood at the floor-to-ceiling windows and stared out at the city.
Forty floors below, the city never fully slept. The skyline stretched in every direction, a grid of light that cost more per square foot than most people earned in a year. I had grown up watching my father stand at windows like this one, hands clasped behind his back, surveying things he owned. I had told myself I was nothing like him.
Yet, I was standing in the same posture.
Somewhere out there, the patient from this morning was lying in the ICU with his heart beating because we had gotten to him in time.
That should have been enough to quiet my mind.
It wasn't.
Instead I was thinking about ibuprofen. About a water bottle passed hand to hand in an empty scrub room at two in the morning. About the way she had said goodnight like it cost her nothing at all. Easy. Unbothered. While I was standing there coming apart over the ghost of her fingertips against my palm.
I had operated on a man's heart today. Held it, essentially, in my hands. Kept it beating through sheer will and twelve years of surgical precision.
I could not, for the life of me, figure out what to do with my own.
Mireya Rosen was going to be the undoing of me. I had known it for a while now. I just hadn't found a way to make peace with it yet.
My phone buzzed on the counter.
I didn't have to look to know who it was. August had been calling every few days for three months, and each voicemail was more insistent than the last.
I could answer right now. Have the conversation I'd been avoiding. Deal with the responsibilities I'd been running from. Face the reality that my father was gone and his empire was crumbling without leadership.
But not tonight.
So I declined the call.
CHAPTER THREE
MIREYA
I satacross from Leah Mills, the hospital's HR administrator, trying to focus despite the relentless pounding behind my eyes. My head throbbed like someone was slowly tightening a vise around my skull. I pressed my fingertips to my temples, drew a slow breath, counted to three, and exhaled.
