Chapter 29
Chapter twenty-nine
Chloe
The moment the knife went in, I didn’t feel it.
There was pressure, sure. It felt sudden and wrong, but I didn’t feel the pain. Then the world tilted sideways, Zac’s voice broke through the cacophony, and everything fractured into panic.
The pain came later.
Fire bloomed under my skin, starting in my shoulder and spilling down my ribcage. Sharp, hot, swallowing everything. I remember thinking: That’s a lot of blood. But instinct told me it wasn’t fatal, that no artery had been hit.
Now, I’m lying on the bed because Zac told me to. Everything in me still buzzes—mind wired, thoughts racing—but my body is too wrung out to argue. And if I’m honest, he’s right. I need to rest, whether I want it or not.
My shoulder throbs—a deep pulsing ache—and with the adrenaline slowly ebbing away, it leaves my limbs heavy.
The curtain rustles, and a tall man in navy scrubs steps inside. Late fifties, looking fresh. No doubt just started his shift. He gives me a quick nod, then glances at the chart in his hand.
“Dr. Chloe Monroe, our hero intern. I’m Dr. Baird, ortho. Stab wound to the left deltoid region. Still conscious, yes?”
I blink. “Barely. But give me five minutes.”
He smiles faintly. “Good. If sarcasm is intact, then you’re not circling the drain.”
He helps me sit up, propped at an angle against the pillows, then moves closer.
With clinical detachment, he peels back the dressing Kara applied and inspects the wound.
“You hated your first day in the ER that much, huh? Decided to take on a mad man.” He prods lightly at the edges.
“It’s superficial in terms of depth—no obvious damage to major vessels, tendons, or bone.
You’re lucky. Another inch and you’d be meeting the ortho team under much grimmer circumstances. ”
“So, no surgery?”
“Nope,” he responds. “You’re stable. This isn’t life-threatening, but we need to keep the antibiotics going, and keep it clean.”
He glances at Zac, who’s standing to the side, tense and silent, bloodstained hands resting on his hips. The surgeon raises an eyebrow.
“You want to do the superficial layers?” he asks Zac like he’s a second-year resident instead of the department head. “You’ve got the hands. Unless you’ve forgotten how to suture, it’s not exactly heart surgery.”
Zac doesn’t answer—just levels him with a glare that says, “fuck you” louder than words ever could.
I bite back a smile. This guy’s hilarious. Either he’s messing with us, or he somehow missed that Zac’s not only the head of the ER—he’s a world-class cardiothoracic surgeon, too.
Dr. Baird turns back to me with a smirk. “You trust him?”
I look at Zac.
More than anyone.
“Yeah,” I say softly. “I do.” My smile breaks free.
“I’ll leave you to it, then. Go home, get some rest—at least a full week to recover before you’re back on duty.”
He gives us one more glance, then disappears behind the curtain.
And just like that, it’s quiet again.
Zac steps to the sink, scrubbing with a focus that feels more like penance than hygiene.
“If I ever turn into a smug, smartass surgeon like him, you have full permission to slap me. Hard and preferably in public. What an absolute cockhead.”
I burst out laughing.
He disinfects the wound with quiet precision. Palpates the skin with gloved fingers that shake just enough for me to notice. His eyes stay on my shoulder, not on me. But I’m watching him.
The tension in his neck. The strain in his eyes. The way he won’t look at my face while he’s doing this.
“Local,” he informs me, lifting a syringe. “You’ll feel a sting.”
Understatement of the year.
He injects it before I can steel myself, and the burn makes me hiss.
“Sorry,” he murmurs, and he means it.
But he still doesn’t look up. He keeps his gaze on the wound, on the instruments, on anything but my face.
He threads the needle slowly. His gloved hands are practiced but not steady. The tremble in his grip isn’t surgical—it’s personal. His brows are drawn. There’s blood dried along the curve of his jaw, and I want to reach for a cloth and clean it, but I don’t move.
“Hold still,” he commands. But I think it’s more for him than me.
I don’t move.
He doesn’t, either.
His fingers hover a half-second longer than necessary before he touches me. When he finally begins, it’s with the reverence of someone touching something precious.
The thread pulls tight. The silence pulls tighter.
And somehow, it’s more intimate than our time together at Eden. This is devotion.
He works quietly and carefully.
“You’re doing fine,” he praises softly.
“Are you?” It slips out before I can stop it.
He doesn’t answer right away. He pauses mid-stitch, shoulders tight, head bowed.
“Not really.”
I nod.
Fair.
“Your hands are shaking,” I add.
“I know.”
“How many more?”
“I’ve done four. Four more to go.”
“Want me to count them with you?”
That gets me a faint exhale—might’ve been a laugh. “I’m good.”
“All right.” I close my eyes. “But I’m counting in my head anyway. For morale.”
The next few seconds pass with only the sound of thread through skin and Zac’s breathing.
“How long were you together?” I ask suddenly, blinking my eyes open, fixing them on the ceiling.
“Since we were kids,” he answers. “We met in high school. In the band. She played the flute and hated the brass section. Said we were too loud.”
I smile faintly. “What did you play?”
“Trumpet,” he admits. “Badly.”
“Figures.” I let out a short, dry laugh.
“She used to make me mix tapes. Labeled them by mood. One said, ‘For when you forget what the sky looks like.’ I still have it.”
I swallow.
“She sounds wonderful.”
“She was.”
I look down, and he’s finished the fifth stitch.
“I wasn’t ready to lose her. I think part of me still isn’t.”
I nod slowly, still not looking at him. “That’s okay.”
“It doesn’t feel okay.”
“It’s not supposed to.”
The skin pulls together as I feel the tug of him placing the sixth suture. Then the seventh.
“She didn’t want kids,” he continues softly. “We were going to adopt. She wanted the kind of family you choose.”
Finally, I dare to look at his face.
“I think she would’ve liked you,” he adds.
“Then I wish I’d met her.”
The last stitch goes in.
He snips the end and cleans the site once more. After applying a clean bandage, he tapes it gently in place.
“Done.”
His hands are finally steady, but only because they’ve finished the job.
He strips off the gloves and scrubs his hands raw at the sink.
Water splashes over the basin, trails across the floor.
When he looks back, he’s wearing the same expression I’ve seen on people who survived the worst day of someone else’s life.
Guilt dressed as composure.
“I should’ve made you leave,” he says.
“We’ve been over this.”
“I know. But—” He shakes his head.
“There’s nothing you could have said or done that would have made me leave,” I say with conviction carved into bone. Because I mean it. I’m not going anywhere.
He sinks into the chair beside the bed.
“It wasn’t just that,” he explains.
I tilt my head. “Then what?”
He looks at me. His eyes are bloodshot, the rims red, irises glassy.
“I was terrified.”
“Of the bomb?”
He shakes his head. “Of you dying.”
Oh.
He looks down at his hands again.
“I could survive everything else. But not that.”
I reach over, brush my fingers against his.
“I didn’t,” I remind him. “I’m still here.”
“But I watched you bleed.”
“And you stopped it.”
“I watched him stab you.”
“And I didn’t break.”
That gets his attention, and he looks at me again.
“You didn’t,” he echoes.
I nod. “Because I wasn’t alone.”
And for the first time since we left Trauma One, I see my Zac returning. He exhales like it’s the first breath he’s let himself take in hours. Shoulders down. Head bowed.
“I’ve watched a lot of people die,” he tells me.
His gaze is distant, aimed somewhere past the curtain, past the present.
“I’ve called TOD on strangers, on kids whose names I never learned. I’ve coded and zipped up people I trained beside. I once wrote a discharge note for a man who died on the toilet while I was arguing with radiology.”
A breath escapes him—almost a laugh. But it’s hollow. Empty.
“None of it touched me the way this did.” His voice is quieter now. “The thought of losing you. I couldn’t bear it, not again.”
My throat tightens. I don’t speak. I tighten my grip, linking our fingers more firmly.
He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t resist. He lets me be there for him.
“I assumed I was already broken,” he explains. “That there wasn’t anything left to lose. But then you stayed. And I realized—I’ve been lying to myself since the day I lost her.”
He squeezes my fingers.
“I’ve been scared of this.” His words come out shakily. “Of you. Of how much space you take up in my chest. It’s not adrenaline talking. It’s you.”
He leans forward, and I meet him halfway, resting my head on his shoulder. He exhales, a tremor splitting it.
“You were the first thing that felt real after everything,” he says. “What if I had lost you?”
I tilt my face toward his. “You didn’t,” I remind him. “You didn’t lose me.”
“I want you,” he states. “Not just at Eden. Not just when we’re bleeding or barely holding it together. I want the version of us that exists outside all of this. When it’s only… us.”
I meet his eyes.
“You were right to be scared,” I say.
He flinches. “Don’t.”
“I was scared, too.”
He holds my gaze.
“Not just of the bomb,” I explain. “Or the knife. Or what could’ve gone wrong. I was scared because I realized how much I wanted to live. And how much of that…” I pause. “How much of that is because of you.”
He goes still.
“I was in that room because I chose to be,” I say. “And I’d choose it again.”
“Even if it killed you?”
“Yes.” I don’t hesitate. “Because I’d rather bleed next to you than be safe without you.”
“Jesus, Chloe…”
“I mean it.”
“I know.” His voice is hoarse. “That’s what terrifies me.”
“I think that’s what love is.”
That stops him cold.
I don’t say it for effect. I say it because it’s time.
It’s been circling within me for weeks now, tightening like a noose every time I tried to deny it. It’s not some dramatic realization or some spontaneous confession brought on by trauma. It’s the truth. And I’m done pretending.
He leans forward again, elbows on his knees.
“You can’t love me,” he tells me softly.
“You don’t get to decide that.”
“I’m broken.”
“So am I.”
“I carry ghosts, Chloe.”
“So do I.”
“I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t—” He cuts himself off and runs a hand over his face. “I can’t lose someone again.”
“I know,” I soothe. “But you didn’t lose me.”
“I almost did.”
“But you didn’t,” I repeat firmly. “You didn’t.”
He looks at me, eyes glassy. His fingers drag over the stubble on his jaw, down to the back of his neck. He closes his eyes, pained.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he whispers. “I was fine being alone. I’d gotten used to it. And then you happened.”
“Then we figure it out,” I reply. “Together.”
He opens his eyes and stares like he’s still waiting for the catch.
“Are you sure?”
I nod. “More sure than I’ve ever been.”
Zac leans forward. Slowly. His fingers ghost over my cheek before they settle, warm and trembling. I swear his touch makes me ache in a different way.
When his lips meet mine, it isn’t with the heat we’ve known before. It’s not desperate or hungry.
It’s reverent. With the care you’d whisper into the dark.
He pulls away, his forehead rests against mine, and we stay like that—breath mingling, hearts slowing, no words spoken because none are needed.
I close my eyes and let the moment anchor me. In my heart. In my bones. In the part of me I used to keep closed off. The part I protected like it was a fortress because I thought needing someone made me weak.
Now I understand—letting someone in isn’t a sign of fragility. It’s choosing to feel, even when that terrifies you. Love doesn’t stop the bleeding. It means you don’t have to bleed alone.
His breath fans warm against my skin.
“Still scared?” I whisper.
He nods, his voice a low rasp. “Yeah. But I’m done running from it.”
I reach for his hand. Link our fingers.
“Me too,” I agree. And I mean it with everything I am.