“What?”
“Your favorite book.”
I blink, startled.“That’s the question?”
He nods.“Yeah.”
I search his face for mockery.There isn’t any.He just wants to know.It sneaks past my defenses because it’s not about fire or fear or ex-husbands, it’s about me.
“Jane Eyre,” I say after a second.“She’s stubborn.She knows she deserves more than scraps even when the world tells her otherwise.”
He smiles slowly.“Of course it is.”
“And you?”I ask, curious in spite of myself.“What do firefighters read?Manuals?Menus?”
His laugh rumbles low.“Comics, growing up.Then anything about engines.Then ...self-defense books after my sister died.”
The shift is small but seismic.
“I’m sorry,” I say instantly, heart clenching.“I didn’t...”
“It’s okay,” he cuts in gently.“You didn’t know.”
I want to ask more.I want to take that hurt from his eyes and hold it for him for a while.But I also know pain when I see it wrapped around someone’s ribs like barbed wire.
He clears his throat.“Point is, I took some courses.Learned some things.I volunteer sometimes to teach women’s classes at the community center.If you want...”
I know where he’s going before he finishes.
“If I want,” I murmur, “you’ll teach me how to fight back.”
His gaze catches mine and holds.“I’ll teach you how to protect yourself,” he says.“How to make a man like him regret every decision he made the second he touches you.And more importantly, how to believe that you deserve to fight.”
Something inside me, something small and shaking and long beaten down, lifts its head.“You’d do that?”I ask quietly.
He leans in, voice dropping, tone carved in steel.“I’d do anything to make sure you’re never scared like that again.”
The room disappears.The hospital.The IV.The past.It all fades beneath the weight of those words and the way he says them—no bravado, no testosterone-poisoned chest beating.Just truth.Dangerous, irresistible truth.
“Okay,” I breathe.
He smiles then, slow and wicked and relieved all at once.“Good.First lesson—stop apologizing for existing.”
I snort softly.“That’s ...not easy.”
“I know,” he says.“We’ll practice.”
We fall into softer conversation after that—stupid jokes, small town gossip, him telling me about the evil coffee at the firehouse and me telling him about teenagers who try to make out in the nonfiction stacks because apparently Dewey Decimal is an aphrodisiac.
He listens.God, he listens.Not like he’s waiting for his turn to talk.Not like he’s tallying information to use against me later.Just ...listening.
Hours blur until the nurse returns with discharge papers and stern instructions about rest and hydration and follow-ups.Darren rises immediately, taking the offered plastic bag of my smoky, ruined clothes like they weigh nothing, then offering his hand to help me swing my legs off the bed.
I hesitate.Not because I don’t want to touch him.Because I do, too much.Then I slide my hand into his.Warm, calloused, and steady.
He makes it easy to stand, like gravity works differently when he’s the one anchoring me.His gaze flicks down my body once, slow, reverent, and unapologetic, then snaps back up to my face.
“You ready?”he asks.
