Lars
What the hell is going on, Soph? I need you to fix this. NOW.
Sophie
You were caught sabotaging a cast member resulting in bodily injury. The network has legal involved. Security walked you out. There is no version of this where you get to keep your job. As far as I’m concerned, we’re done.
Lars
Are you serious right now? You literally told me to do it! WTF, are you going to just pin this whole thing on me?
Sophie
Be very careful Lars. If you imply I instructed you to injure someone, I will have my attorneys file a libel claim.
52
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Holly
“He looks at me like I’m not the disaster… I’m the reason he’ll survive it.”
The doctor’s verdict should have felt like relief, but it landed in Holly’s chest like a threat wrapped in kindness. No permanent damage, he’d said, which sounded like mercy until he followed it with words likecarefullyandslowlyand the quiet implication that her body had limits whether she accepted them or not.
She’d smiled anyway, nodded like a good patient who wasn’t already calculating the cost of every day she couldn’t rehearse properly, every sponsorship that might evaporate, every treatment bill waiting at home like a loaded gun. Her brain had already opened seventeen worst-case scenario tabs and refused to close any of them.
When the doctor finally left, the room went too still, and the silence made space for the fear she’d been holding back since the second her ankle snapped.What if this takes more than time? What if it takes my career? What if it takes my mother?She stared at the sun slicing through the blinds in pale ribbonsand hated how fragile it made her feel, trapped in a bed like she’d been reduced to something breakable.
Nate came back in like he belonged there, like hospital rooms were just another place he could claim with his presence. He was carrying two coffees and a paper bag, and he looked unfairly good for someone who’d barely slept and had spent the last several hours being a one-man security system.
His curls were a mess. There was a shadow of beard across his jaw that she desperately wanted to feel between her thighs. His hoodie hung loose on his shoulders like armor he’d forgotten to take off, and when he looked at her, his eyes softened in a way that made her throat tighten because she didn’t know what to do with gentleness that didn’t demand anything in return.
He handed her a cup like it was the most normal thing in the world for an NHL menace to become her personal fetcher. She took it, their fingers brushing, warmth sparking through her hand and up her arm like her nervous system had been waiting for his touch the way plants wait for sunlight.
He didn’t talk right away. He sat beside her, close enough that she could feel him without looking, the heat of him bleeding into the sterile air. She sipped the coffee, the bitterness grounding her, and tried not to notice how her chest loosened just a fraction with him there. She’d always told herself she didn’t need anyone to soothe her because needing people was how they got in where they could hurt you.
But Nate didn’t feel like he was trying to take something. He felt like someone holding the door open and offering her room to breathe. It was obscene, really, how quickly she’d come to trust the steadiness of him.
“You’re thinking too loud,” he said finally, voice soft, like he’d learned the shape of her storms.
Holly’s laugh came out thin. “That’s not a thing.” Fantastic. Even her coping mechanisms had become observable phenomena.
“It is with you,” he replied, turning his head to look at her properly. “You do that stare. Like you’re about to fight the world.”
She tried to roll her eyes, but it came out weaker than she’d meant it to. “I’m fine.”
Nate made a sound that didn’t argue so much as refuse. “You don’t have to be fine in front of me,” he said, and that sentence hit harder than any dramatic declaration could have because it was said like fact. Like he wasn’t trying to win her over because he’d already decided she was worth the truth.
His gaze flicked to her ankle, the brace, the swelling, the way the blankets couldn’t hide the injury’s ugly reality. Holly watched the muscle jump in his jaw as if he was physically restraining himself from harming the universe on her behalf. When he looked back at her, something in him had shifted into quiet certainty, the kind that made her feel both protected and terrified.
“I went to the studio this morning.”
A flicker of a frown passed over her face. “What for?”
“To make sure Lars fuckingleft,”he told her, that sexy fucking voice of his hovering on the verge of a growl that would undo her senses all the fucking way to a hospital room blowjob. Truly incredible how her libido continued clocking in for work during medical emergencies.
“Really,” she said, eyes wide. “What happened?”
