When the food was gone, the door opened again. The doctor—the same one who’d been checking on Kiernan since surgery and was here earlier—stepped inside with a tablet in hand.
“Good news,” she said. “I’m comfortable discharging you tomorrow morning, provided you have round-the-clock care for the first week. Someone to monitor for infection and make sure you’re not overdoing it.”
“He does,” I said before Kiernan could speak.
A dry laugh escaped him. “Apparently, I don’t get a vote.”
“You voted,” Ophelia said. “You lost.”
The doctor smiled. “I’ll have the paperwork ready by ten. Get some rest tonight. All of you.”
She left, and his throat worked. A war played out across his face—the part of him that wanted to shield us fighting the part that wanted to keep us.
“Fine.” The word was rough. Reluctant.
But it was a door left open.
“Fine,” I echoed. “We leave tomorrow.”
Kiernan closed his eyes. “That wasn’t surrender. That was exhaustion.”
“I’ll take it.”
He didn’t squeeze my hand. But he didn’t pull away either.
I leaned in and pressed my forehead to his. He was trembling—or maybe that was me.
“We’re going to figure this out,” I murmured against his skin. “Whatever you need. Whatever you’re afraid to ask for.”
His eyes opened, and they held fear he was still trying to hide.
“Oliver.” His voice was barely a whisper.
“Yeah?”
He looked at me, then at Ophelia, watching us from the end of the bed with wet eyes. Then back to me.
“Don’t let me destroy you.”
It wasn’t a request. It was a warning.
And I had no answer for it—except a kiss.
25
OPHELIA
The drive to Greymarch took five hours.
Kiernan slept for most of it, stretched across the backseat of Callen’s Range Rover, with his head in my lap and his injured shoulder braced against pillows they’d given us when he was discharged. The doctors had offered an ambulance, but Kiernan had refused with a look that ended the discussion. He’d endured enough indignity. He wasn’t arriving at his own home on a stretcher.
Callen drove, Oliver sat in the front passenger seat, and I sat in the back with Kiernan’s weight warm against my thighs and my fingers in his hair.
The tight control he wore like armor had loosened in slumber, showing the vulnerability underneath. He winced each time the vehicle hit a bump despite Callen navigating the roads as smoothly as he could.
Every few minutes, Oliver’s eyes would glance at us, and I’d nod. We’d developed a shorthand over the past few days, a way of communicating without words. It felt natural. As though we’d been doing it for years.
We’d made this drive once before, three weeks ago, when Oliver was the one who needed care and Kiernan was the one in control, and while the landscape hadn’t changed, it seemed everything else had.
