“We made a deal once,” she went on. “Back when we were barely old enough to vote and already tired of the world. If one of us started drowning, the other would jump in. No questions asked.”
“And now?” I asked gently.
“Now I’d follow her into fire, into hell, into a hurricane.”
She said it like a vow. Like she already had.
I looked at her, really looked. At the steel she carried under the silk of her dress. At the way her fingers trembled when she set down her drink, even though her jaw never did. She didn’t see it, but she was just like Remi. She thought she was the one who needed saving. She wasn’t. She was the fire everyone else gathered around.
“Is that why you do this?” I asked. “The clinic. The cases. The chaos. Is it all for her?”
“It may have started that way. But now… now it’s for the ones we couldn’t save. For the girls who never...” She broke off, caught herself, and forced her voice steady. “For girls like Sofia. For Jenny. For me.”
“For you?” I repeated. And an ache was settling deep at the thought of her being a victim.
Her eyes flared blue at that. Too honest. Too exposed. “Remi didn’t start off saving strangers. She started off by losing her sister and saving me.”
That one landed like a blade between us.
I hadn’t expected this tonight. Not the rawness. Not the way she peeled herself open just enough to let me see past the armour. Not the way desire coiled low in me, not just for her body but for the impossible honour of being let in at all.
“You don’t have to fix anything,” she said suddenly, catching my stare. “I’m not a project. I don’t need saving.”
“I know,” I said, voice low. “I just want to stand beside you. Maybe make the weight a little lighter.”
Her lips parted. She blinked, once, twice, then looked away like she didn’t trust herself to hold my gaze too long. Like she knew I saw her. All of her.
“I don’t know if I know how to let someone do that,” she admitted.
“You don’t have to know yet. But maybe we can start by trying.”
For a long moment, she said nothing. Just breathed slow and deep, like she was making a decision that could change everything.
“It’s hard for me to let people in, Harlan. With the work I do, the things I hear and see every day… It’s hard for me to trust. To not assume the worst. I try to live without a jaded perspective, but it’s really hard, especially when I’m proven right more often than not. That’s why I don’t do first dates. Because I don’t date.”
“Okay.” It was all I could say. All I needed to.
“You’d have to be patient with me,” she whispered.
“Okay.”
She studied me again, long enough that I felt it in my chest. Like she was measuring the distance between us, the danger, the possibility.
Then she reached for another taco.
And in that small, ordinary gesture, I saw the yes, she wasn’t ready to give voice to yet.
Not tonight.
But soon.
CHAPTER 23
AVA - PERFECT
The first time I stayed over, I didn’t mean to.
It was late, the clinic had run long, and Harlan had dropped by with tea just as I was finishing my last pass at my notes. I told him not to hover. He said he wasn’t. Then sat in the chair across from me and did exactly that, with his arms crossed and that frustratingly still patience he wore like armour.
