I run my palms up the backs of her calves in what I hope is a soothing gesture. “You need to rest, Lila. You’ve burned through a lot of adrenaline.”
“So have you.”
“It’s my job. I’m used to it.”
“You have a pathological need to take care of others,” she whispers. “But I think it’s important you take care of yourself, too.”
“I’m fine,” I insist. “Will you at least lay down for a few minutes?”
Lila looks like she might protest, but when I reach for a throw pillow and plop it down on the far end of the sofa, she gives in with a quiet sigh and moves to lay down across the cushions. I shift on the floor to sit by her head, feeling bold enough in this darkness to tenderly brush her wild strands of hair off her face.
She gazes at me for a moment. “Can I tell you something?”
I trace my thumb along the smooth curve of her jaw. “Sure.”
“You’re one of my favorite people that I’ve ever met.”
At those words, I feel a strange sensation inside my chest. Like something breaking and mending at the same time, something releasing and reforming in tandem with my stuttered breathing.
“You haven’t known me long,” I murmur to her.
Lila’s hand comes up to circle around my wrist, halting my movements so that my palm is resting against the side of her head. “Don’t argue with me, Doc. I’m the expert on my favorite things, not you.”
I chuckle quietly.
But then I think about the two others currently vying for her heart.
About Hale, who hasn’t allowed himself to fall for anyone in all the time I’ve known him. Not until Lila came into our lives and rattled his carefully constructed barriers.
And Noah, who puts on a good show of being lighthearted and unbothered, but would never admit to needing even half as much love as what he gives to others.
They deserve her, and she would be happy and safe with either one of them.
So who am I to want her just the same?
I think about all the stress in my life. The custody situation, the fate of Station 47, the uncertainty of my career, the lingering grief of being widowed young… with all of that to bear, I shouldn’t have room for anything else.
But I do. Because love for Lila doesn’t feel like another burden added to the pile. It feels like a balm, like an extra pair of hands helping me hold it all up.
And it’s true that I haven’t known her long, but I’ve been a grown man long enough to understand what love looks like whenever it comes around.
Maybe I have no right to love her, but how can I convince myself of that while she’s gazing at me through the dark like I’m the one who hung the stars in the sky for her to admire?
“Don’t go anywhere,” she breathes. “Please.”
“I won’t,” I promise.
I expect her to close her eyes, to drift away into the protective world of darkness that the brain concocts for us after we go through something particularly stressful. But it’s clear that Lila has already made it to the other side of that. She’s wired now. Wide awake.
And so am I.
“Evan?”
“Hm?”
“Will you kiss me again?”
Again, because we were interrupted the first time. Desire flares deep in my abdomen because I know that we couldn’t have gone much further down on the weightlifting bench in the station’s gym, but here… Here, in the quiet of my living room, with Leo and Rosa both heavy sleepers enclosed in their rooms on the opposite end of the apartment…
