Chapter 13 #2
Dylan was discharged on a gray morning that smelled like rain and wet pavement.
I was coming off shift when the San Diego crew rolled him out in a wheelchair despite his obvious hatred of the entire arrangement.
Nate followed behind in another wheelchair, wearing sunglasses indoors and complaining that no one had clapped for his survival.
I saw them from the far end of the lobby and froze before I could stop myself.
Dylan saw me too. Even across all that space, even weakened and pale, his gaze found mine with the same impossible certainty it always had.
He did not call my name. He did not lift a hand.
He did not ask me to come closer. He only looked at me like a man finally learning that wanting was not the same thing as having the right.
That was when I knew something had changed.
Not enough.
But something.
After that, time stretched. Dylan went back to San Diego to heal under Callum’s watch and Nate’s relentless commentary.
I heard pieces from Regan, from Lily, from the club grapevine no one admitted existed.
He started physical therapy. He lost weight, then gained it back.
He walked with pain, then without showing as much of it.
He went back to his classes before any doctor with sense would have recommended it.
He finished the certification work he had once talked about like it was a future meant for someone better than him.
Callum officially backed the construction arm, and Dylan threw himself into blueprints, permits, job sites, and recovery like a man trying to rebuild his life with both hands while one of them still shook.
I did not wait for him.
That mattered.
I worked. I slept badly. I fed Cupcake. I let Lily drag me to terrible movies and one farmer’s market where she bought homemade jam from a man she later described as “emotionally suspicious but excellent with peaches.” I went to therapy twice a month because Regan told me strength was not the same as refusing help, and for once I was tired enough to listen.
I wore Mandy’s diamonds. I wore the turquoise ring.
I did not wear Dylan’s cuff. It stayed in my drawer, wrapped in a soft cloth, not forgotten but no longer living on my skin like a question I was afraid to answer.
Dylan called after six weeks.
I let it go to voicemail.
He did not leave one.
The next day, he sent a text.
I know I don’t get to ask for anything. I just wanted you to know I’m healing. And I’m trying to do it honestly this time.
I stared at the message for a long time.
Then I typed back:
Good.
That was all.
Ten minutes later, he answered:
Yeah. I deserved that.
I smiled despite myself, then put the phone down and went back to folding laundry with hands that were not quite steady.
After that, he did not chase me. Not in the old way.
Not with possessive looks in hospital rooms or half-confessions dressed up as guilt.
He texted once a week, sometimes less. Small things.
Honest things. Nate is threatening to buy me a cane with flames on it.
Callum says I limp like an old dog with unpaid debts.
Passed inspection on the first renovation job.
Thought you’d like to know. I did not always answer.
When I did, I kept it brief. Careful. But the spaces between us began changing shape.
They were no longer full of running. They were full of waiting for the right kind of courage.
By late fall, I came home from a shift to find him sitting on the curb outside my apartment building.
Not leaning against a motorcycle like a fantasy.
Not smirking like he had a right.
Sitting.
Pale around the edges, one hand braced carefully against his side, wearing jeans, boots, and a black jacket that made him look like trouble had cleaned up just enough to be invited inside but not enough to be trusted alone near anyone’s daughter.
Cupcake sat three feet away from him, glaring like she had been appointed my legal counsel.
Dylan stood when he saw me.
Slowly.
Carefully.
No games.
No touching.
No Beautiful.
Not yet.
“I’m not here because Georgia left,” he said.
My fingers tightened around the strap of my bag.
That was the right first sentence.
The only one, maybe.
“I know she left.”
“I know you know.” His voice was rough, but steady. “I needed to say it anyway.”
Cupcake hissed.
Dylan glanced down at her. “Fair.”
I almost laughed.
Almost.
He looked back at me. “I’m here because I stopped using other people as proof I could live without you.”
My throat tightened.
Cupcake hissed again, apparently committed to representing my emotional boundaries.
“I was a coward,” he said. “I called it protecting you. Then I called it choosing Georgia. Then I called it doing the right thing. But it was fear. All of it. I loved you, and I was afraid of what that meant, so I made everybody pay for it.”
The words moved through me slowly.
Not healing everything.
Not enough.
But real.
“I’m not your almost,” I said.
“No.”
“I’m not your punishment.”
“No.”
“I’m not the woman you come to because the safe one left.”
His face tightened, but he held my gaze. “No. You’re the woman I should have been brave enough to choose when you were standing in front of me.”
My heart did the stupid, dangerous thing again.
It reached.
I made it wait.
Dylan took one step closer, then stopped himself. Like he knew every inch mattered now. Like he knew restraint only counted if I did not have to ask for it.
“I’m not asking for forever tonight,” he said.
“I’m asking for one date. The one we never got.
No hospitals. No bullets. No graveyards.
No goodbyes.” His mouth curved a little, tired and hopeful and scared enough to make him honest. “If you still want me after that, I’ll spend the rest of my life earning the second one. ”
I looked at him standing there beneath the weak gold light of the apartment walkway, no ring between us now, no fiancée in a chair, no old lie dressed up as sacrifice.
Just Dylan.
Finally in the light.
Behind me, Cupcake hissed again.
I glanced down at her. “You’re not helping.”
Dylan’s mouth twitched.
I looked back at him.
“One date,” I said.
His whole face changed.
Not into victory.
Relief.
Gratitude.
Something dangerously close to joy.
I lifted a finger before he could ruin it by looking too happy.
“And Dylan?”
“Yeah?”
“If you turn this into some tortured biker poetry about fate and fire, I’m leaving you with the cat.”
He looked down at Cupcake, who appeared ready to ruin his life for sport.
Then he looked back at me.
“One normal date,” he promised. “No poetry.”
“Good.”
But as he smiled, soft and crooked and mine in a way he had never been brave enough to be before, I knew we were both lying a little.
There had never been anything normal about us.
Maybe there never would be.
But for the first time, abnormal did not feel like a wound.
It felt like a beginning.
Destiny
Dylan picked me up in a truck.
Not on a motorcycle.
Not in some dramatic blacked-out vehicle with club shadows tucked behind the windows.
A truck.
A clean, dark gray pickup with a cracked leather keychain, a travel mug in the cup holder, and one of Nate’s ridiculous get-well cards shoved into the visor where Dylan had probably forgotten it existed.
The card had a cartoon skeleton on the front wearing a leather vest and the words YOU’RE NOT DEAD, brO written in glitter pen across the top.
I stared at it when I climbed in.
Dylan saw me looking and sighed. “Nate.”
“That explains the glitter.”
“He said it made the card festive.”
“It looks like a craft store committed a felony.”
“Yeah. That tracks.”
I laughed before I could stop myself.
The sound filled the cab, small and startled, and Dylan looked at me like I had handed him something breakable.
Not hungry.
Not possessive.
Just grateful.
That almost undid me before we even left the parking lot.
He looked better than he had outside my apartment two days earlier.
Still thinner than before the shooting. Still careful with certain movements.
Still pale around the edges when pain caught him wrong.
But he had shaved, trimmed his beard, and put effort into looking like a man going on a date instead of a man who had recently been threatened by half a hospital staff for trying to sit up too fast.
He wore dark jeans, boots, and a black button-down under his jacket. Simple. Clean. Very Dylan, if Dylan had ever known how to be simple about anything.
His hand rested on the steering wheel.
Scarred knuckles.
Tape gone.
No tubes.
No ring.
No other woman’s promise sitting in the space between us.
That should have made breathing easier.
It didn’t.
It made everything feel more real.
Dylan glanced over before pulling out of the lot. “Seat belt.”
“I’m a nurse.”
“Then you know better.”
I gave him a look.
He gave one back.
It was such an ordinary argument that my throat tightened.
I clicked the belt into place. “Bossy.”
“Alive.”
“That is also true.”
His mouth curved slightly, but the smile faded before it became careless. He checked mirrors, backed out slowly, and drove like a man who had been given one fragile chance and did not intend to run a single red light with it.
For the first few minutes, neither of us said much.
Albuquerque moved past the windows in late-fall gold and shadow.
The sun had already begun sliding toward the horizon, turning the Sandias pink at the edges.
Traffic hummed around us. A woman in the next lane sang dramatically into her steering wheel.
A kid in the back of an SUV pressed a sticky hand against the glass and waved at me like we were old friends.
I waved back.
Dylan noticed.
“She your people?”
“Obviously.”
“Strong connection.”
“She saw my soul.”
“She saw your nurse badge.”
“That too.”
Another small silence settled, easier this time.