“For emergencies only,” she said.
I smiled. “You’re learning.”
I turned the key and eased the cart forward, the path lighting up ahead of us.
Chapter 3
Zoey
The nursing stationat Pine Hollow was clean and sparsely furnished with a narrow bed bolted to the wall, cabinets labeled in tidy handwriting, and a rolling stool parked in the corner.
“This isn’t necessary,” I said, which was my default setting. I said it about most things that involved care or attention targeted at me.
Liam shut the door behind us. He turned, and for a second, I just… noticed.
He was big. Not gym-big, but structurally large. The kind of big that made doorways seem impossibly small. Standing that close to him did something irritating to my sense of scale. I wasn’t short—had never been. And yet my brain kept insisting I was suddenly taking up less space in comparison to him, but strangely, it made me feel safe instead of small.
It felt illegal.
“The nurse practitioner lives on the property,” he said. “Same as me. I’m going to see if she’s available.”
“That’s really not necessary,” I repeated, climbing onto the bed anyway. “It’s the middle of the night. I’m sure there’s an ice pack I could use for a few minutes and be right back to normal.”
I peeled off my shoe and set it on the floor. Swelling had arrived with confidence. It looked proud of itself, all red and puffy.
I stared at it. “Okay, that’s rude.”
He took his phone out, typed, paused, deleted something, typed again. His thumb hovered for a beat before he sent the message.
“She’s on her way,” he said.
I scowled. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“You stepped in a hole on our property,” he said. “You’re dizzy. You can’t put weight on it.”
“Icanput weight on it. The dizziness is from the booze.”
I tried to stand to prove my point. The room tilted immediately. My body made a brief, misguided suggestion toward movement, and my ankle rejected it.
He moved without touching me, close enough that I was again very aware of how much space he occupied and how easily he could steady me if he needed to.
I didn’t ask him to.
“May I?” he asked, gesturing to my foot.
Nodding, I sat back down. I was not prepared for how careful he was.
He cradled my heel with both hands, steady and sure, like he had done this before. His thumbs pressed lightly around the swollen area. He watched my face, not my ankle.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, a deeply unhelpful thought surfaced:At least I’d gotten a pedicure.
This was not the moment to be grateful for aesthetic foresight, and yet…
I swallowed and immediately hated myself for it.
“That hurt?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said.
