“You good?” he asked for the third time since we'd left his house.
“If you ask me that one more time, I'm gonna start lying just to make it interesting.”
His mouth twitched, but he didn't smile.
The elevator doors opened and we stepped inside. A woman in scrubs got on after us, took one look at Rook, and did a double-take that would've been funny under different circumstances.
“You're—” she started.
“Yep,” Rook said, hitting the button for the third floor with more force than necessary.
The woman looked like she wanted to say more, but something in Rook's expression made her reconsider. We rode up in silence, and when the doors opened again, Rook's hand found mine and squeezed once before letting go.
“I can come in if you want,” he said quietly. “Or I can wait out here. Your call.”
The truth was I didn't trust myself not to bolt the second things got uncomfortable, and Rook's presence was the only thing keeping me tethered to the idea that I was supposed to be here.
“You can come in,” I said. “But if you answer any questions for me, I'm telling everyone you cried during the Toy Story credits.”
“I didn't cry during Toy Story.”
“You absolutely did. I saw the tears.”
“That was allergies.”
“Sure it was, Captain Sensitive.”
The waiting room was mercifully empty except for a guy scrolling through his phone in the corner. We checked in with the receptionist—a middle-aged woman who didn't seem to recognize Rook, thankfully—and sat down in chairs that were only marginally more comfortable than the ones in the ER.
Rook sat close enough that our knees touched, and I could feel the tension radiating off him in waves. He'd been like this since he'd found me—coiled tight, hypervigilant, watching me like he expected me to disappear if he looked away for too long. It would've driven me crazy if I didn't understand exactly why he was doing it.
“You're hovering,” I said, keeping my voice low.
“I'm sitting.”
“You're sitting like a bear guarding a salmon. It's very intense.”
“I'm not hovering.”
“You've checked on me seventeen times since breakfast. That's hovering.”
“I was making sure you ate.”
“I ate. You watched me eat. You counted my bites like a creepy carb accountant.”
That got a small smile out of him, and I felt a flicker of satisfaction. Making Rook smile had always been one of my favorite things to do, and the fact that I could still do it after everything that had happened felt like proof that I hadn't completely destroyed the good parts of myself.
“Soren Vale?” A nurse appeared in the doorway, clipboard in hand.
I stood up, and Rook stood with me, his hand hovering near my elbow like he thought I might need help walking ten feet across a waiting room. I shot him a look and he had the grace to look slightly sheepish.
The exam room was small and sterile, with the usual lineup of medical equipment and a poster about hand-washing that had definitely seen better days. The nurse took my vitals—blood pressure, temperature, pulse—and asked the standard questions about pain levels and allergies. Rook stood in the corner looking like a bodyguard who'd accidentally wandered into the wrong building, and I had to bite back a laugh.
“The doctor will be in shortly,” the nurse said, and then we were alone again.
“You can sit down,” I told Rook. “I'm not gonna spontaneously combust if you stop staring at me for five seconds.”
He sat down in the chair by the door, but his eyes never left me. I perched on the edge of the exam table and tried to figureout what to do with my hands, which suddenly felt too big and too obvious. The paper crinkled under me every time I shifted, and the sound was loud enough to make me wince.
