Chapter 8
eight
Remy
The briefing has been running for forty minutes. Cole is talking about a client's field injury report. Miguel is making notes on his tablet, and I haven't absorbed a single word because my brain left this conference room three nights ago and hasn't come back.
Her face.
Not the rooftop. Not the string lights or the fog or Darcy three chairs away telling a story I couldn't hear. Just her face when she turned and looked at me, and she didn't flinch, didn't soften, didn't perform a single thing.
Three nights ago, and my hand was on the back of her chair and her eyes were on mine and the distance between those two facts was exactly the width of everything I'm pretending isn't happening.
My fingers stop on the trackpad. Half a second, maybe less.
You're in a briefing. Do your job.
The coffee sits cold. And nothing in this room smells like rosemary or salt water or her skin when I leaned close enough to speak under the noise.
"You good, Saint?"
Cole's voice is easy, almost casual, and I know better than to believe either quality. He's not asking because he's concerned. He's asking because he noticed the half-second pause, and he's filing it alongside whatever else he's been compiling since the rooftop dinner.
"Didn't sleep." I lean back, matching his posture, letting the grin settle into place like muscle memory. "Miguel's been sending me articles about circadian rhythm optimization at two in the morning. Hard to rest when your inbox is full of unsolicited medical journals."
Miguel shakes his head from the far end of the table, but the corner of his mouth pulls. Cole doesn't smile. Cole watches me for one more beat, like you'd watch a chess piece that moved to an unexpected square, and then he looks back at his screen and the moment passes.
Because Saint handles briefings and deflects questions and drinks cold coffee and doesn't think about a woman's eyes across a rooftop while fog turned the string lights soft.
Three nights. How many briefings before it stops replaying? How many conference rooms full of fluorescent light and operational data before her attention stops pressing against the back of my skull like something physical, like something I could reach back and touch if I let my hand move?
I don't let my hand move.
My phone buzzes against the table. I glance down.
Darcy: ok so dont freak out but evie twisted her ankle on the stairs and shes saying shes FINE but shes limping and I dont know if its a sprain or what
The bottom drops out of my stomach. A cold, fast free fall that has no place in a conference room, and my body is reacting like the text said something else entirely.
She's fine. Darcy said she's fine. This is a grade one sprain at worst and you're about to give yourself away in a room with Cole Tanaka because a woman twisted her ankle.
I'm already standing, chair pushing back, laptop closing in one motion.
"Darcy needs me at the house." I'm reaching for my jacket on the chair back with hands that are steady, that are always steady, that moved before my brain caught up. "Miguel, can you take the Kade briefing on the fitness assessment? Notes are in the shared file."
Miguel nods, already pulling up the document. Cole says nothing and watches me leave.
The drive usually takes eleven minutes. I make it in seven on the Agusta, lane-splitting through Marina traffic with my heart rate running higher than the ride warrants. I text Darcy one word at a red light: Garage.
The door is already rolling up when I turn onto the block.
Darcy meets me inside before I've killed the engine, words already spilling.
"Okay so it was totally my fault because I said we should take the shortcut through that little park with the stone steps, you know the ones by the marina, and she was wearing those sandals, the flat ones not even heels, and the step was wet and she just, like, went sideways and I heard the pop and oh my GOD Tripp I swear if I—"
"Darcy." I set my keys on the entry table. "Where is she."
"Kitchen. She's being so stubborn about it, she literally hopped to the counter and started making tea like nothing happened, and I tried to carry her but she weighed more than I expected, not that she's heavy, she's just, like, dense, oh my God don't tell her I said that—"
I'm already moving past her.
The kitchen is bright and smells like the lemon verbena Evie bought last week, the one that's sitting on my windowsill in a pot she found at the farmers market, next to the herb garden she planted in containers I didn't own before she got here.
My kitchen looks nothing like it did two weeks ago.
Every surface has her fingerprints on it, sometimes literally, and I've stopped pretending I don't notice.
She's on the counter, legs hanging, right ankle already swelling visibly above the strap line of her sandal, and for one half-second the medic in me takes a back seat to the part that just rode here in seven minutes and sees her hurt and wants to put his hands on every inch of her until he's confirmed she's whole.
The half-second passes. The medic clicks back on.
There he is. Good morning, Saint. Nice of you to show up.
"I'm fine."
"I know." I open the cabinet under the island where I keep the field kit, the one I moved down here from the study after the first week because Darcy burns herself on something every other day. "Darcy, I need the ice pack from the freezer and the blue pillow from the living room couch."
"On it." Darcy disappears at full speed, grateful for a task that isn't guilt.
I kneel in front of Evie and unzip the kit on the floor. Gauze, elastic wrap, butterfly closures, the penlight I use for pupil checks. Everything in its place, everything sterile, and my hands know this kit well enough to find any piece of it in the dark.
Evie looks down at the kit, then at me, then back at the kit. "You know, most people keep their first aid supplies in the bathroom. Not in a combat medic bag stocked for bullet wounds."
"Most people's sisters don't treat a kitchen like a combat zone." I take her right foot in both hands and she goes still.
A laugh escapes her, short and surprised, and it changes her whole face for a second before she shuts it down. "She did set a dish towel on fire last Tuesday."
"Tell me where."
"Outside. Below the bone."
My thumb finds the outer ankle bone and presses, working in small circles around the joint.
"Fudge." She hisses it through her teeth, her fingers tightening on the edge of the counter. "Right there. The knob on the outside."
Swelling is moderate around the outer ankle. My fingers find the ligament below and press gently, gauging her response.
She doesn't flinch. Her breath catches instead, a small hitch that has nothing to do with pain.
I note it anyway. The way her ankle fits in my palm. The swelling is hot to the touch, the skin above it cooler by comparison. Her pulse under my fingertips, quick and light. Not pain, I know what pain looks like, this is something else.
"Flex for me." I guide her foot through dorsiflexion, watching the range of motion. She manages about fifteen degrees before her jaw tightens. "And point."
She points. Less resistance than I expected.
"Good news." I reach for the elastic wrap. "Nothing's torn."
"And the bad news?"
"You're grounded for a week. And no more hopping to the kitchen on a joint that's actively swelling."
"You sound like you've given this speech before."
"Once or twice." I start the wrap at the ball of her foot, figure-eight around the ankle, keeping the tension even.
Her calf is warm under my knuckle where it brushes as I loop the wrap.
There's a faint scar on her shin, old and silvered, that I haven't seen before.
She has a freckle on the inside of her ankle bone that I'm now going to know about for the rest of my life.
Her toes curl once when my thumb grazes the arch of her foot, and the sound she makes is so quiet I almost miss it, a soft exhale through her lips that lands somewhere low in my chest and stays.
You're wrapping an ankle. You're wrapping an ankle and building a mental map of your sister's best friend's leg. This is not what they taught you in field medicine.
I press a strip of athletic tape over the worst of the swelling to stabilize the wrap. It also takes an additional thirty seconds of my hands on her skin, and I do it anyway.
"You're very thorough." Her voice is lighter than it should be. There's something underneath it, a tone that wasn't there when she told me she was fine, and when I look up from the wrap her cheeks are flushed and her eyes are dark and she's not looking at the wrap. She's watching my hands.
My thumbs rest on either side of her ankle. I'm kneeling on my kitchen floor. She's sitting on the counter above me with her knees apart, the light pooling in the loose waves of her hair, and if this were any other woman in any other room the position would not require medical context.
She opens her mouth. "Remy—"
My gaze drops to her lower lip. The way her breath catches on the first syllable of my name. One second, maybe less, but long enough that I know what I'm looking at and she knows I know.
"I found the pillow AND the ice pack AND I also grabbed that throw blanket because her toes always get cold, you're welcome." Darcy rounds the corner with her arms full, and the moment fractures.
I stand and step back. Slide the field kit back under the island and snap the latches closed.
"Thank you, Dr. LeBlanc." Dry. Deflecting. Her mouth curves just enough to make it dangerous.
"Anytime." I hold her gaze a beat longer than the word needs. "She needs to be off her feet. I'll take her upstairs."