Chapter 12
DYLAN
I knew she was in the room before I opened my eyes.
Could’ve been scent, except hospitals smelled like bleach, plastic, old fear, and whatever antiseptic they used to convince people death didn’t live in the walls. Could’ve been the sound of her steps, except nurses moved in and out all night and half of them wore the same soft-soled shoes.
But I knew.
Some part of me that had been tracking Destiny Rourke since a burning desert night woke up before the rest of my body did.
She was there.
I opened my eyes.
And there she was.
Blue scrubs. Hair pulled back. Badge clipped to her chest. Tablet in one hand. All professional edges and tired eyes, pretending she had not once sat beside my bed, held my hand, and whispered words into the dark that had dragged my sorry ass back from the edge.
Morning light hit her from the side, thin and pale through the half-open blinds.
It turned her skin soft and made the diamond studs in her ears flash like little blades.
Mandy’s diamonds. The ones she wore every day.
I knew that because I knew too much about her life and not enough about how to survive it.
Her hair was darker under the hospital lights.
Blue-black.
Shiny.
Pulled back tight enough to look controlled, but not tight enough to hide the few loose pieces that had escaped around her face. One curl brushed her cheek, lying against her skin like temptation had decided to get specific.
My fingers itched.
Actually itched.
Which was stupid, considering I had tape on my hands, tubes in my veins, a line tugging at my arm, and enough pain under my ribs to remind me I had recently lost an argument with a bullet.
Still.
My fingers wanted her hair.
Wanted to slide through that dark silk and feel if it was as soft as I remembered.
It was.
I knew it was.
I remembered the grave. Cabo. Her hair running through my hands like something I had no business touching and less business missing.
I remembered salt air and smoke and her mouth trembling under mine.
I remembered being a better man for one brief second because I had stopped when every part of me wanted to keep going.
Now I lay there in a hospital bed, half-dead, engaged, and still wanting the same woman.
Alive, but doubly fucked.
“Morning,” she said.
Her voice was careful.
Too careful.
That nurse voice.
Cool, calm, steady. The voice she used when people were bleeding and she needed them to believe she could handle it.
I hated that voice on me.
I loved it.
Hated that too.
“Nurse Rourke,” I rasped.
Her eyes flicked.
Just once.
Good.
The formal name hit her.
It hit me too.
A punishment.
A reminder.
A line drawn on tile between the bed and the woman standing beside it.
“Patient Degan,” she said.
My mouth almost moved into a smile.
Almost.
Pain stopped it.
Or maybe shame did.
She went to the monitor first. Of course she did. Numbers before feelings. Vitals before history. She stood close enough that if I were not wired to machines and carved up under bandages, I could have reached out and caught her wrist.
I didn’t.
Good man.
That was what I was supposed to be.
A good man.
Good men did not touch women they loved while their fiancée’s sweater hung over the chair.
Good men did not imagine pulling a nurse between their knees while recovering from major surgery.
Good men did not wake up to one woman’s hand and get hard thinking about another.
My body, apparently, had missed the lecture.
It started low.
A traitorous pulse beneath the pain, beneath the drugs, beneath all the careful reasons I had built and stacked like bricks around myself. Desire, slow and dark, smoldering under the ash like hot coals that had never gone cold no matter how many years I starved them of air.
She leaned over slightly to check the IV line.
The movement brought her closer.
Not much.
Enough.
The neckline of her scrub top shifted. Nothing indecent. Nothing meant for me. Nothing at all.
My blood noticed anyway.
My cock twitched beneath the thin hospital blanket.
Barely.
Enough.
Heat slammed through me that had nothing to do with fever.
Shame followed so fast it nearly made me sick.
Georgia had walked in and out of this room. Had sat beside me for hours. Had cried over me. Had kissed my forehead and held my hand and whispered about fighting for us with her ring flashing under hospital lights.
My body had not done that for her.
Not once.
Not even when she leaned close.
Not even when her hand brushed my chest.
Not even when I told myself she was my future and Destiny was the past.
Then Destiny walked in wearing scrubs and exhaustion, and my half-dead body decided to prove I wasn’t dead after all.
Bastard.
My hand curled against the sheet.
Pain shot through my side.
Good.
I deserved that.
“How’s your pain?” Destiny asked.
“Manageable.”
She looked at me.
Just looked.
Then typed something into the tablet.
I narrowed my eyes. “Didn’t say seven.”
“You have a tell.”
“I do not.”
“You get meaner around six and quiet around seven.”
That line went straight through me.
Because she knew.
Still.
After all the years and all the running and all the noble bullshit I had dressed up as distance, Destiny knew the shape of my pain.
“You remember that much about me?” I asked.
Her fingers stilled on the tablet.
For one second, the room changed.
No machines. No Georgia’s sweater. No IV. No bullet wound.
Just Destiny looking at me with all the things she refused to say sitting behind those dark eyes.
Then she blinked.
“I remember patients.”
Liar.
I almost said it.
Wanted to.
Wanted to push. Wanted to crack that professional mask and get to the woman underneath. The one who had whispered I love you when she thought I couldn’t hear. The one who had kissed my knuckles instead of my mouth because she was too decent to steal from Georgia even when her heart was breaking.
My heart kicked.
The monitor ratted me out.
Destiny pretended not to hear.
Professional.
Always professional.
She pulled on gloves.
That should not have been hot.
Nothing about latex gloves, hospital protocol, and a pain chart should have been hot.
But her hands had always been a problem.
Small, sure hands. Healer’s hands. Hands that could hold pressure on a wound, mix old herbal remedies, cup a mug of matcha, wash blood from someone’s skin, or slide into my hair and turn me into a man with no defenses left.
She checked the dressing near my side.
I held still.
Barely.
Her touch was clinical.
Careful.
Impersonal.
My body did not care.
Every brush of her gloved fingers against my skin burned. Not because she lingered. She didn’t. Destiny was too careful for that. Too good. Too afraid of becoming her mother’s worst story.
That fear was in the room with us.
I saw it in the way she kept her face calm.
In the distance she put between one touch and the next.
In the way she refused to let her eyes drop below where they had to go for work.
It made me want her more.
It made me hate myself more.
Two things could be true.
“Any dizziness? Nausea?”
“No.”
“Shortness of breath?”
“No.”
“Chest pain?”
I looked at her.
“That a medical question?”
Mistake.
Her eyes lifted to mine.
The silence caught fire.
There it was.
Everything.
The grave. Cabo. Santa Monica. ICU. Her voice in the dark. My name in her mouth. My name. Not Nurse Rourke. Not some idea of me she had outgrown. Dylan.
She felt it too.
I knew she did.
Her pupils widened just enough. Her lips parted slightly before she pressed them together. That loose piece of hair slid along her cheek, and I had the stupid, vivid thought of wrapping it around my finger.
Then she stepped back.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s a medical question.”
Good girl.
No.
Not good girl.
Wrong thought.
Wrong everything.
I looked at the ceiling for half a second and tried to remember I had a fiancée.
Georgia.
Georgia with the ring.
Georgia with the soft mouth and warm hands. Georgia who wanted me alive. Georgia who had done nothing wrong except love a man who had mistaken gratitude for surrender.
The door opened.
Dr. Bennett walked in.
I hated him immediately.
Not rationally.
Not because he had done anything wrong.
Because he looked at Destiny like she was a woman before he looked at her like a nurse.
And I noticed.
I noticed the way his face changed. The little lift of interest. The easy smile.
The confidence of a man who had probably never had to wonder whether he belonged in a room.
Sandy hair. Rolled sleeves. Clean jaw. Doctor posture.
The kind of man women’s families approved of before he finished saying hello.
The kind of man who made sense next to a surgical nurse with diamonds in her ears and a future bright enough to hurt.
My hand tightened in the sheet.
The IV tape pulled at my skin.
“Doctor,” Destiny said.
Her voice stayed neutral, but I caught the shift in her shoulders.
She knew.
She knew I was watching.
Good.
No.
Not good.
Damn it.
Bennett checked the chart, then smiled at her. “Rourke. There you are.”
There you are.
Like he had been looking.
Like he had a right to enjoy finding her.
A low heat moved through me, dark and mean.
I had no claim.
Georgia’s ring existed.
I had no claim.
Destiny was not mine.
I had no claim.
My body and temper disagreed.
“How’s our favorite gunshot wound?” Bennett asked.
“Our?” I said.
The word came out rough as gravel.
Destiny’s mouth twitched like she wanted to smile and was furious about it.
Bennett glanced at me. “Figure of speech.”
“Try another.”
He looked surprised.
Good.
Destiny adjusted the cuff around my arm with more force than necessary. “He’s alive. We’re calling that progress.”
Her fingers brushed my forearm.
My pulse jumped.
The cuff caught it.
So did she.
Her eyes flicked down.
Then up.
For one brief second, she looked almost rattled.
That pleased me in a way I had no right to enjoy.