“Did you bring me a present?” he asked, his voice slurring slightly.
Patrick handed it over with mock solemnity. “For the bravest catapult engineer in California.”
Rome hugged the otter to his chest with his good arm. “I broke my arm,” he announced, sounding almost proud now that the shock had worn off.
“So I heard.” Patrick pulled up a chair beside me. “Hazard of the engineering profession, I’m afraid. My brother broke his collarbone when we were kids.”
Rome’s eyes widened with interest. “Did it hurt really bad?”
“Aye. Terribly,” Patrick confirmed. “But he got to miss school for a week, and everyone signed his cast. Not a terrible trade, all things considered.”
Rome considered this, then nodded seriously. “Will you sign my cast tomorrow? With a marker that matches your hair?”
Patrick laughed, a warm sound that filled the sterile room. “I’ll bring an entire set of colors.”
For the next hour, Patrick kept Rome entertained with stories while I sat beside the bed, holding Rome’s good hand. He was good at this—distracting a frightened child, making the abnormal feel manageable.
As night fell, a nurse brought in a cot for me to sleep on. The room grew quiet, Rome drifting in and out of sleep, the pain medication making him groggy.
Patrick moved his chair closer to mine. The hospital sounds—the distant paging system, the squeak of rubber soles on linoleum—faded into the background.
“How are you holding up?” he asked, his voice dropping to a murmur.
I leaned against his shoulder, too exhausted to maintain the brave front I’d been wearing all day. “I’m failing at everything,” I confessed, keeping my voice low so Rome wouldn’t hear. “The meeting is in six days, and I have nothing. I’m going to lose it all.”
Patrick’s jaw tightened. I felt the muscle tick against my shoulder. “I couldn’t watch you fight this alone. I did something. I crossed a line.”
Something in his tone made me sit up straighter. I looked at him, really looked at him. There was a hardness in his eyes I hadn’t seen before.
“What do you mean?”
He hesitated, choosing his words with care. “I have a cousin—Callum. He’s... well, he used to work in intelligence. Now he’s a fixer of sorts. Corporate espionage, information gathering. The kind of person who can find out things that aren’t supposed to be found.”
“You hired someone to spy on Arthur?” The idea was so foreign to me that I struggled to process it. This was the man who organized his kid’s schedules with color-coded charts.
“I asked him to find out who Arthur’s working with. What his actual plan is.” Patrick met my eyes directly. “I couldn’t stand by while he destroyed everything you’ve fought for.”
I stared at Patrick, the implications of what he’d done slowly sinking in. He’d compromised his own morals. He’d stepped into the mud.
For me.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I whispered, but there was no real conviction behind my words.
Patrick’s eyes held mine, unwavering. “I’d do it again.”
Right then, I saw Patrick McCrae stripped bare—his obsessive organization wasn’t just some cute character trait. It was his fortress against a universe that had robbed him blind.
My throat tightened. “What happens now?”
“Callum will call when he has something. Until then, we focus on Rome.” His thumb traced circles on my palm, warm and rough. “And on making sure you get some rest.”
Rome stirred in his hospital bed, mumbling something in his sleep about the otter. I reached up to smooth his hair back from his forehead, careful not to disturb the small bandage where they’d cleaned a scrape.
“I’ll stay,” Patrick said. “You sleep.”
“You don’t have to?—”
“I know.” He smiled slightly, weary but sure. “I want to.”
