“I’m so… selfish.” Lila takes my cue to keep her voice down, remembering even in her haze of panic-induced exhaustion that there’s a sleeping child down the hall. Rosa is also here, sleeping in the tiny guest room that she’s claimed for herself.
“Selfish?” With a firm hand on the small of her back, I steer her into the living room and coax her down onto the sofa. “Lila, you just ran at lightning speed toward two people you care aboutvery deeply, putting yourself in danger just to see for yourself that they were okay.”
She pouts down at the corner of the throw blanket draped over one arm of the sofa, running her fingers over the tangled fringe of yarn.
“Exactly, Evan. I put myself in danger when there were already so many others in need, and then I got in the way. Not to mention the fact that I was just freaking out so badly that you had to leave the scene just to get my dramatic ass away from it all.”
I sink down onto the cushions beside her, then gesture to the radio on my belt.
“If I’m needed again, Rita will let me know. Anyway, my shift ended about five minutes before the alarms went off. Technically, I wasn’t supposed to respond to that call.”
Lila falls quiet. She sits with loose limbs, propped up like a doll, and looks around the shadowy living room. The only source of light comes from the lamp by the door and the dull glow from a streetlight outside the window. Still, she looks radiant. Her golden hair is tangled, her emerald eyes gleaming from the few tears she shed during her anxiety attack.
There’s a roaring instinct within me to touch her. Not in the sense that I yearn to make a move on her when she’s in such a vulnerable state, but more like I can’t stop myself from offering her the barest form of connection right now. I reach out andplace my palm on her thigh. She’s wearing a little tennis skirt and a pretty green cardigan, though the sleeves of the latter are streaked with soot and her bare knees are scraped up and dirty from the way she collapsed onto the ground beside Hale and Noah.
Seeing her battered skin up close, I curse quietly and lurch up from the sofa. I can feel her eyes on me as I go to fetch the first aid kit from under the sink, but she doesn’t question me. Not until I kneel on the carpet before her once more and pop open the kit.
“You don’t need to do that,” she sighs as I tear open an antiseptic pad.
Honestly, the scrapes have barely broken the skin, and there’s only a tiny smear of blood across her left knee, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
“You know as well as I do how disgusting the ground is in this city,” I murmur, dabbing carefully at the tattered skin to remove the little bits of gravel and dirt. “I’d hate for you to contract cholera.”
“Cholera comes from contaminated water. You should know that, Doc.”
I breathe out a soft laugh. How do I explain that I’d be purposefully obtuse over and over again if only to hear her gentle corrections?
“See? Look at this,” I whisper, peering closer at a little tear of broken skin where a small bead of glass has embedded itself. I coax it out with a gentle swipe. “What would you do without me?”
“I don’t know, Evan.” There’s a raw honesty in her tone that causes me to look up at her. She’s staring down at me with slightly parted lips, her expression difficult to read in the dimness, but her beauty is so overwhelming that I have to drag my attention back to her wounds just to regain a sense of stability.
When I’m finished, I sit back on my heels. “I don’t think you need any bandages.”
Lila’s lips twitch. “I don’t think so either, Doc.”
“Is that my nickname now? You know I’m not a doctor, right?”
She shrugs, the movement small and tired. “It suits you. You’re Doc and Noah is Dimples.”
“What is Hale?”
But the mention of the captain causes her to flinch, no doubt bringing to mind the too-recent memory of his unconscious form and bruised torso.
“He’ll be okay,” I assure her. I consider mentioning that Hale has dealt with much worse than a broken rib and a possible concussion, but I don’t think that would help.
Lila nods. “Yeah…”
I close the lid on the first aid kit and push it aside before looking back up at her from my position on the floor. “You can stay here and rest for the night. Leo and his nanny will probably be up around seven, but I’ll send Rosa a text explaining why you’re here so it’s the first thing she sees when she wakes up.”
Lila furrows her brow, seeming confused.
“Or,” I quickly revise, “I can order you an Uber home right now? Or ask Rita to let you hitch a ride back to the station if you’d prefer?”
The furrow deepens. “You’re not staying? I thought you said your shift was over.”
“When you passed out, my plan was to put you to bed up here, then head out to the hospital to check on Cap. And then I was probably going to make my way to 47 to make sure everyone else is all good.”
“But I’m awake. I want to go with you.”
