“Yes, ma’am.”
“Well, Beatrice, you tell me the truth. Did I sprain it, or does it just want attention?”
“Maybe a bit of both.” I smile despite my pulse. “RICE for now—rest, ice, compression, elevate. And if it gets worse, I’m calling a car and we’re getting you checked.”
She smiles at my acronym like it’s a private joke we’re sharing.
“You’re very capable,” she says, and it’s so close to proud that something in my chest wobbles.
Keys rattle. A door bangs open hard enough to make the peonies across the room tremble. Heavy, fast steps head our way, and the temperature in the hallway drops three degrees before he even rounds the corner.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
Noah fills the narrow hall like a storm front—with his jaw locked tight, eyes dark, and shoulders squared. The bruising onhis face hasn’t finished fading, but his fury has no limp. His rage hits me first, then skids to his mother and softens for a single heartbeat.
“Mom.” His voice goes gentle. “You okay?”
“I fell off the rug like a cartoon character,” she says, sounding less mortified than she was when I came here. “Your assistant rescued me.”
His gaze slices back to me. “Outside. Now.”
“Excuse me?” I say, still holding the ice to his mother’s ankle. “She’s not elevated yet?—”
“Outside,” he repeats in that commanding tone that has no room for negotiation.
“Noah Ezekiel King,” his mother starts sharply, “use your manners. The ones I taught you.”
I fix the towel over her ankle with careful firmness. “You’re fine for a minute,” I promise her. “Don’t put weight on it.”
Then I stand and follow him to the tiny foyer because I don’t want this poor lady to hear us, but the first words out of him ricochet down the hall anyway, letting the whole building know what he thinks.
“You don’t come here. Ever. Do you understand?”
I blink. “She called you. On your phone. Which you didn’t hear or didn’t pick up. She said she’d been on the floor and couldn’t get up. What would you like me to have done—send positive affirmations?”
“You call me,” he snaps, low and lethal. “You call Ezra. You call the doorman. You do not show up to her place.”
“I did call you,” I fire back. “Try answering the device you keep ignoring. Ezra? Voicemail. And the doorman? Seriously?”
His lips purse. “You don’t understand.”
“Then explain it to me,” I snap. “Because from where I’m standing, a woman called for help, and I showed up. That’s it.”
His jaw tightens. “She spirals,” he says. “When strangers cross into the safe parts of her life, she spirals. She doesn’t sleep. She’ll be cooped up here even more, and I’ll have to up her meds. And then I spend a month pulling her back.” His face tightens with anger as he leans closer. “The Newside project is for her. But it’s useless if you set her back.”
“IfIset her back?” I croak.
“Yes, you.”
I swallow a lump in my throat. “Because I’m a stranger?”
“Yes. You are to her,” he bites back. “And now she’s going to ask me a hundred questions about why my assistant was in her bathroom and what it means and whether I’m—” He breaks off, rakes a hand through his hair. “You can’t be here.”
The words land like a slap with a long-lived echo inside my head. I feel it even in my ribs. “I didn’t come for a social call, Noah. I came because she fell in the bathroom and was scared. And you didn’t answer your phone.”
His mouth goes hard. “You came because you don’t know how to stay out of things that aren’t your job.”
That does it. “My job?” I spit out each word. “My job is you. Which includes answering your phone when you forget it and triaging your emergencies when you vanish into meetings. This was an emergency.”
