Chapter 17
Chapter seventeen
Sister's Anniversary
Lena
Hypothermia recovery sucked. Waking up in Zane Quinn’s actual bed, wearing his Metallica T-shirt that smelled like leather and catastrophic life choices, while my body performed its own medical rebellion? That sucked worse.
I wake up in stages, like coming out of anesthesia—first the pain, then the disorientation, then the absolute mortification of realizing I'm in a bed that isn't mine, wearing a shirt that definitely isn't mine, and my left ovary is composing symphonies about the shirtless man sitting guard in a chair beside me.
Sweet bleeding medical Mary, he's beautiful in that dangerous way that makes smart women stupid.
Tattoos mapping trauma across his chest—Emma's name over his heart in script that looks like tears, dates that probably mark deaths, symbols I don't want to understand.
Scars that tell stories I want to read with my tongue, which is clearly a sign of hypoxic brain damage because that's not a normal thought for someone who just almost died.
"You're awake." His voice is gravel and exhaustion and something else—relief maybe, or the specific flavor of worry that comes from watching someone you care about turn into a popsicle.
"How long—?"
"Six hours. Your friend Izzy knows you're alive. Your brother doesn't know you almost weren't."
I try to sit up. The room performs an impressive centrifuge impression, and my stomach considers evacuating the nothing that's in it.
He's there immediately, hands on my shoulders, steadying me, and we're so close I can catalog his vitals by proximity: elevated heart rate (visible pulse at 95 BPM), dilated pupils (arousal or adrenaline or both), that copper scent of fear-sweat still clinging to his skin.
"That kiss you owe me," he says, voice dropping to that register that makes my recovering organs contemplate failure.
"Now? When I potentially have mild brain damage from oxygen deprivation?"
"Now." His thumb traces my jaw, and my skin lights up like someone's running electricity through dying nerves. "Before your brother finds out. Before this gets worse. Before—"
My phone erupts with Miguel's ringtone—"Hells Bells" because he thinks he's funny.
We freeze, inches apart, sharing the same recycled breath, while my brother's call screams between us like a Code Blue alarm. I can taste what the kiss would be—copper and danger and the kind of decision that requires informed consent I'm not capable of giving right now.
"Answer it," Zane says, pulling back but not far, his hand still on my shoulder like he's checking for a pulse. "Tell him you're at Izzy's."
My hands shake as I swipe to answer. "Hey."
"Where the fuck are you?" Miguel's voice could strip paint. "Izzy sounds like she's being waterboarded when I ask."
"I'm at her place." The lie tastes like hypothermia and betrayal. "Got sick after the warehouse. She's taking care of me."
"Sick how?"
"Exhaustion. Dehydration. The usual post-trauma collapse." Not technically a lie. Just missing the part about almost freezing to death with my body pressed against his brother's enemy.
"I'm coming over."
"No!" Too fast, too panicked. Zane's hand tightens on my shoulder. "I mean, I might be contagious. Could be flu. You can't risk getting sick with the—the thing coming up."
What thing? My hypothermic brain scrambles for MC knowledge.
"The run," Miguel supplies, suspicious but buying it. "Yeah. Okay. But I want proof of life every four hours."
"That's excessive."
"That's non-negotiable."
He hangs up, and I sag back against pillows that smell like Zane—cigarettes he's trying to quit, motor oil from his garage, something clean underneath like he actually does laundry, unlike me.
"I should go," I say.
"You can't walk."
"Watch me."
I stand. My legs have other opinions about supporting my body weight. I'm falling, and then I'm not, because Zane's caught me, pressed against him, my hands flat on his chest feeling his heartbeat race from normal to tachycardic in two seconds flat.
"Lena."
The way he says my name is a diagnosis and a prayer and a threat all at once. We're so close I can see the gold flecks in his brown eyes, the scar through his left eyebrow, the way his jaw clenches like he's physically holding words back.
"We can't," I whisper.
"We already are."
"This will end badly."
"Everything good does."
He leans in. I don't pull away. Our lips are millimeters apart when my phone buzzes with Izzy's text: Miguel's driving by your apartment. Get here NOW.
Twenty minutes later, I'm at my apartment, delivered by Zane like medical equipment—careful, essential, fragile.
Izzy's there with props: soup on the stove, medicine bottles scattered strategically, her nursing textbooks spread out like we've been studying instead of covering up my near-death experience with Phoenix's Most Wanted.
"You look like hypothermic shit," she says helpfully.
"Thanks. Really feeling the friendship."
"He knows," she continues, stirring soup I won't eat. "Miguel. He knows something's up. That warehouse raid has him paranoid, and you disappearing after it?"
"I didn't disappear. I almost died."
"With a member of Iron Talons. Naked. In a freezer." She turns to face me, and her expression is pure best friend concern mixed with professional assessment. "Lena, this isn't sustainable."
She's right. My body's still recovering—core temperature probably still low, mild confusion, exhaustion that feels cellular.
And my phone won't stop buzzing with texts from Zane, checking in, making sure I'm okay, sending voice notes that I can't listen to with Izzy here but that make my damaged neurons fire in interesting patterns.
The weekend passes in a blur of recovery and lies. I miss my first shift ever, Lisa Santos calls twice, Miguel drops by with Mom's soup recipe that he can't make right but tries anyway. And Sunday night, when I should be sleeping, my phone rings with a FaceTime from Bad Decision.
I shouldn't answer. I'm not wearing makeup, my hair looks like I've been electrocuted, and I'm pretty sure I still have mild hypothermia face, which is not attractive.
I answer anyway.
Zane's drunk. Not sloppy drunk, but the careful kind that comes from drinking with purpose, with grief. His eyes are red, and there's a bottle of whiskey visible in frame.
"Today's her anniversary," he says without preamble. "Emma. Two years."
"Zane—"
"She died in my arms." The words fall out like he's been holding them in his throat. "Not—not overdosed yet. After I found her, tried CPR. She came back for thirty seconds. Just long enough to look at me. To say my name."
My chest cracks open. I understand this specific grief—the moment when someone you love recognizes you while dying, when their last word is your name, when you become the final thing they see.
"My mom said my name too," I hear myself say. "After the crash. Before she died. Like she was apologizing."
We stare at each other through screens, two broken people finding matching shards.
"We're both broken," he says, like he's reading my mind.
"Maybe broken fits together better," I reply, and watch something shift in his expression.
Behind him, soft and tragic, Hozier starts playing. "Work Song," because the universe has a twisted sense of humor about our soundtrack.
"This is our song," he says, matter-of-fact drunk. "This is playing when I marry you."
"You're drunk."
"Doesn't make it less true."
"Zane—"
"I need to hold you. For real this time. No freezer required." His voice breaks slightly. "Just need to know you're real. That you're okay. That we survived."
"We survived," I confirm, even though survival feels like a technicality when everything else is falling apart.
"Play the song," he says. "Play it and think about me."
I do. I lie in bed playing "Work Song" on repeat, thinking about a man I shouldn't want, who saved my life, who's mourning his sister while I'm betraying my brother, who talks about marriage like it's possible for people like us.
My body's recovering from hypothermia.
My heart's developing something worse—symptoms of a condition that's probably terminal, definitely inadvisable, absolutely irreversible.
I'm falling in love with Zane Quinn.
Miguel's going to kill us both.