Nancy promptly licked his fingers like he was the one who’d personally delivered her from darkness.
Doyle turned to Jordan, already reaching for my bag, ready to get me out of there and sweep all of this under the rug. “Can you take her upstairs? I’ll stay and help Charlie clean this up.”
His voice was soft—polite, even. The version of Doyle that people trusted. The version that sounded calm and dependable. But I caught the edge in it. The urgency. The quiet strain. But it wasn’t care. It was containment.
“I’m fine,” I murmured, but no one heard me.
Charlie’s voice cut through the space, low but firm. “Shouldn’t she go to the hospital?”
I glanced up. He was watching Doyle—not me—with a subtle frown, trying to make sense of what was happening, almost like he’d seen this kind of deflection before.
Doyle’s head snapped up, a too-bright smile already in place. “That’s a great idea,” he said quickly, throwing an arm around Jordan’s shoulders. “Jordan can take her. Just to be safe.”
And that was that. I was being passed off like a hot potato nobody wanted to hold too long.
“I’ll go, too,” Lee chimed in, casual but already moving toward the door. “It never hurts to have backup. Or snacks. I’m great with a vending machine.”
Doyle didn’t acknowledge him. He was too busy grabbing a handful of napkins and making a show of helping Charlie wipe up a puddle of water I’d knocked over near the worktable. Crisis diverted—damage managed.
No one would ever suspect that Doyle had been cleaning up messes of mine, just like this, our whole lives.
I opened my mouth to protest, then shut it again. My head throbbed, my stomach rolled, and every cell in my body begged for a shower and some kind of dignity reboot. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to have a medical professional, and not a group of half-wine drunk millennials, give me a once-over.
Charlie met my eyes briefly, and for the first time all night, there wasn’t irritation behind his expression. A quiet concern lingered there instead. But he didn’t say anything more.
And Doyle? Doyle wouldn’t look at me.
Chapter Six
TALLY
Icouldbarelyfeelmylegs by the time we left the hospital. My body hummed with that hollow ache that comes after you’ve hit a wall so hard, it knocks the breath clean out of you. My hands still smelled faintly of antiseptic. My mouth was dry. I’d nodded along while the doctor listed off everything I’d been neglecting—hydration, rest, food that didn’t come in a wrapper—and each word landed like a stone. She hadn’t scolded. She didn’t have to.
Because I already knew.
This wasn’t exhaustion. It was consequence. Every skipped meal, every “I’m fine,” every tomorrow I’d promised myself had stacked up until the weight finally toppled.
By the time we reached the penthouse, the pressure in my chest had turned sharp, wrapping tight around my ribs. Not nausea. Not heat. Guilt. Shame. Fear. All of it pressing in at once.
The elevator doors slid open, and there they were—Doyle and Dig, parked at the kitchen table like they’d been waiting all night. Empty plates. Half-drained cocktails. Doyle’s head snapped up, his chair scraping back before I even crossed the threshold. He didn’t come to me. His focus locked on Jordan, who hovered behind me, shoulders heavy with whatever truth had followed us home.
Dig, on the other hand, sprang from his seat like it was a trampoline. “Oh my God, you look like warmed-over hell,” he whispered, arms wrapping tightly around me as he squeezed. “I mean that with love. You’re still prettier than ninety percent of this city.”
I clung to him like a lifeline, grateful for the warmth, for the familiarity. For someone who didn’t make me feel like a burden.
Behind me, I caught snippets of Doyle and Jordan’s low, tense conversation. Words like “rest,” “plan,” and “tomorrow” floated into the air, clipped and quiet. They were always like this—two halves of one unit, locked in their own orbit. It hit me all over again, like it always did. When it came down to it, Doyle had chosen his future, and I hadn’t been part of it.
Not really.
“You wanna go for a walk?” Dig asked, his voice soft as he tucked a piece of hair behind my ear. “The two of us? After you clean your raggedy-ass self up first, of course.”
“Off a short pier? Yes.” I sighed, twisting a damp curl around my finger until it tugged. “I wish he’d let me explain. I almost get the sense he’s more angry with me than worried.”
Through the glass doors, Doyle and Jordan had migrated to the lanai, whisper-shouting like it was an Olympic sport. I caught a flurry of Doyle’s hand gestures—sharp, frantic, blaming. Jordan answered with slower movements, deliberate and tired from hours spent bedside at the hospital.
No wonder I always wanted to bolt. The drama didn’t start with me—it stuck to me better than it stuck to anyone else.
“This is usually the part where we’d get drunk,” Dig said lightly, nudging me. “But you’re, like, aggressively not fun anymore. Something about creating life?”
