Lila closes her eyes and turns her face toward the wall.
Leo clears his throat quietly. “I brought him because he needed to see you.”
I rise from the chair. “Yes,” I reply. “He did.”
I leave them with Leo after that.
The hallway outside feels colder than it should, and the lingering exhaustion I’ve been outrunning all night finally begins to catch up with me in strange, uneven waves.
I lean lightly against the wall, letting the quiet of the corridor settle around me. Nurses move past at the far end of the hall, their voices low, their footsteps soft against the polished floor.
I reach into the pocket of my coat. My phone is there, returned to me along with the rest of the things recovered from the SUV. There are several missed calls waiting. Most of them are from Ethan.
A knot tightens briefly in my chest as I press his name and lift the phone to my ear. Ethan answers on the first ring.
“Rowan?”
His voice breaks around my name with so much relief it momentarily steals my breath.
“I’m okay,” I tell him immediately, one hand braced against the corridor wall while I speak. “I’m safe.”
He exhales hard enough that I hear it through the phone. “Jesus Christ. Mom’s been losing her mind.”
“I know.”
“Where are you?” he demands.
“At a hospital. Lila got hurt, but she’s alive.”
He starts asking questions too quickly after that, each one crowding the next, and I close my eyes before answering what I can without trying to explain the entire night over a phone line at nearly two in the morning.
“Tell Mom I’m okay,” I murmur. “Tell her I’m safe and I’ll call her myself as soon as I can.”
There’s a brief pause. “Is there anything else?”
My hand tightens against the phone. “Yes.” I lower my voice even though no one is close enough to hear. “I’m pregnant.”
Ethan doesn’t hesitate. “I know.”
The words stop me cold. “You… know?”
“I know,” he repeats.
A dozen questions push to the front of my mind, but none of them matter as much as the one thing I need right now.
“Don’t tell Mom yet,” I request. “Please.”
Ethan exhales slowly. “Rowan…”
“I need to be the one who tells her.”
There’s a brief pause on the other end of the line. “Okay,” he says finally. I won’t say anything.”
“Thank you.” I exhale in a sigh of relief.
When I lower the phone, Kiren is standing at the far end of the hallway waiting for me. Not speaking, just watching.
He has shrugged out of his coat now, and without it, he looks even more dangerous somehow, the violence of the night still clinging to him in posture, expression, and the stripped-down intensity of the way he looks at me.
