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I keep my hand protectively over my abdomen and get into his car. “I will wait for you,” he says quietly.

The car pulls away, and I watch the hospital shrink behind us until it has vanished from the mirror completely. I should’ve left this place a long time ago.

25

LEV

I close Yelena’s medical report and set it down. “You’re not going anywhere,” I command.

She’s already dressed in a light, luxurious sundress, standing at the mirror, spine straight, adjusting a pearl earring, her pale hair loosely braided over one shoulder, her lashes so pale they seem nonexistent.

“I’m perfectly fine now,” she huffs, annoyed.

“The doctor doesn’t agree with you.” My face hardens.

She laughs, the sound infectious, her dress swaying as she turns to face me. “That old man would keep me in bed until I’m ninety years old.” She lets out a sigh. “My friends will start thinking I’m on my deathbed if I keep turning down every single invitation,” she adds.

My jaw is locked tight at that. “Don’t joke about that,” I say, too low, too rough. The subject still festers, too raw for me to touch.

“It’s only a short beach trip. No swimming, no drinking, I promise you.” She sets down the earring and smiles sweetly. “I will take the driver and both bodyguards along with me. A day by the sea will take the edge off.”

She makes the whole accident sound like ancient history, a story from years ago instead of days, as if everything were a dream she has already woken from. I still see her thrashing in the black water every time I close my eyes, going bloodless and limp against my chest, her lips purpling, gone the wrong color. It is not a thing I can wave off the way she does, however irrational my fear may be.

I remember her first heart attack, more than twenty years ago now. She collapsed at a party, eyes unfocused, and when I lifted her, she weighed almost nothing at all. Protecting her turned into a consuming reflex somewhere inside me, and it never once turned off.

“Fine,” I say, taking a steadying breath. “You can go, then.”

Her smile deepens, and her features shift from amazement to excitement. “Come with me,” she purrs.

“I have work,” I answer, impassive. She studies my face for a long moment, searching it for something, and then her features twist briefly and she looks away.

She grabs her purse and pauses at the door, a glint in her eye, to say goodbye to me. I nod once, and the door closes behind her.

The room goes silent without her in it, and I drop into an armchair. Documents and meetings are waiting for me, and I don’t move, as the dented clock on the wall marks each slow tick.

Another face rises, intrusive, in my mind instead, and it’s Delaney. Wet, tousled blonde hair plastered to her cheeks, brown eyes blown wide with fear, those pillowy lips gone pale.

I remember glancing toward her stretcher on the dock, only once, after they had wrapped her in a thermal sheet. Her eyes were open. They were looking straight at me, a look that still pierces me, and there was something in them I didn’t let myself read at the time. I confirmed she was breathing, and then I turned right back to Yelena, as though the matter were settled, as though a woman looking at you like that is a thing you get to set down.

I had told myself Delaney was too strong and too wicked tempered to be taken down by a little water. Now, sitting here alone, it sounds like exactly the cheap, weaselly excuse it was.

I get up and go find her room, and it’s directly across the hall from Yelena’s. I had not once realized how close the two of them were the whole night.

I yank the door open onto an empty bed, the blanket folded down in a neat square. My chest constricts around nothing at all, and it feels as if something has scooped out my belly.

I stop a passing nurse. “The patient in this room,” I demand curtly. “Where is she?”

She checks her chart, skimming the page. “Miss Cox was discharged.”

“When?” I demand, and my tone makes her flinch back a step. I soften it, fists balled at my sides, and add, “I’m her employer, and I need to reach her.”

The nurse relaxes a little. “A couple of days ago. She insisted on leaving early, before she had fully recovered. She disobeys orders, that one.”

She left while I was down the hall, one wall away, and I never once saw her go.

“Did she leave alone?” I rasp.

“No, a man came for her. Her boyfriend, I assumed. He opened her car door for her. It was endearing.”