Chapter Twenty-One Evan
“Iam the worst person ever,” she sighs as I guide her across the threshold of my apartment. I’d been prepared to carry her up all three flights of stairs, but her eyelids fluttered open as soon as we entered the building, and she insisted I set her down.
I flick on the lamp resting on the little table by the door. “What on earth makes you say that?”
“I’m so… selfish.” Lila takes my cue to keep her voice down, remembering even in her haze of panic-induced exhaustion that there’s a sleeping child down the hall. Rosa is also here, sleeping in the tiny guest room that she’s claimed for herself.
“Selfish?” With a firm hand on the small of her back, I steer her into the living room and coax her down onto the sofa. “Lila, you just ran at lightning speed toward two people you care about very deeply, putting yourself in danger just to see for yourself that they were okay.”
She pouts down at the corner of the throw blanket draped over one arm of the sofa, running her fingers over the tangled fringe of yarn.
“Exactly, Evan. I put myself in danger when there were already so many others in need, and then I got in the way. Not to mention the fact that I was just freaking out so badly that you had to leave the scene just to get my dramatic ass away from it all.”
I sink down onto the cushions beside her, then gesture to the radio on my belt.
“If I’m needed again, Rita will let me know. Anyway, my shift ended about five minutes before the alarms went off. Technically, I wasn’t supposed to respond to that call.”
Lila falls quiet. She sits with loose limbs, propped up like a doll, and looks around the shadowy living room.
The only source of light comes from the lamp by the door and the dull glow from a streetlight outside the window.
Still, she looks radiant. Her golden hair is tangled, her emerald eyes gleaming from the few tears she shed during her anxiety attack.
There’s a roaring instinct within me to touch her.
Not in the sense that I yearn to make a move on her when she’s in such a vulnerable state, but more like I can’t stop myself from offering her the barest form of connection right now.
I reach out and place my palm on her thigh.
She’s wearing a little tennis skirt and a pretty green cardigan, though the sleeves of the latter are streaked with soot and her bare knees are scraped up and dirty from the way she collapsed onto the ground beside Hale and Noah.
Seeing her battered skin up close, I curse quietly and lurch up from the sofa. I can feel her eyes on me as I go to fetch the first aid kit from under the sink, but she doesn’t question me. Not until I kneel on the carpet before her once more and pop open the kit.
“You don’t need to do that,” she sighs as I tear open an antiseptic pad.
Honestly, the scrapes have barely broken the skin, and there’s only a tiny smear of blood across her left knee, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
“You know as well as I do how disgusting the ground is in this city,” I murmur, dabbing carefully at the tattered skin to remove the little bits of gravel and dirt. “I’d hate for you to contract cholera.”
“Cholera comes from contaminated water. You should know that, Doc.”
I breathe out a soft laugh. How do I explain that I’d be purposefully obtuse over and over again if only to hear her gentle corrections?
“See? Look at this,” I whisper, peering closer at a little tear of broken skin where a small bead of glass has embedded itself. I coax it out with a gentle swipe. “What would you do without me?”
“I don’t know, Evan.” There’s a raw honesty in her tone that causes me to look up at her.
She’s staring down at me with slightly parted lips, her expression difficult to read in the dimness, but her beauty is so overwhelming that I have to drag my attention back to her wounds just to regain a sense of stability.
When I’m finished, I sit back on my heels. “I don’t think you need any bandages.”
Lila’s lips twitch. “I don’t think so either, Doc.”
“Is that my nickname now? You know I’m not a doctor, right?”
She shrugs, the movement small and tired. “It suits you. You’re Doc and Noah is Dimples.”
“What is Hale?”
But the mention of the captain causes her to flinch, no doubt bringing to mind the too-recent memory of his unconscious form and bruised torso.
“He’ll be okay,” I assure her. I consider mentioning that Hale has dealt with much worse than a broken rib and a possible concussion, but I don’t think that would help.
Lila nods. “Yeah…”
I close the lid on the first aid kit and push it aside before looking back up at her from my position on the floor.
“You can stay here and rest for the night. Leo and his nanny will probably be up around seven, but I’ll send Rosa a text explaining why you’re here so it’s the first thing she sees when she wakes up. ”
Lila furrows her brow, seeming confused.
“Or,” I quickly revise, “I can order you an Uber home right now? Or ask Rita to let you hitch a ride back to the station if you’d prefer?”
The furrow deepens. “You’re not staying? I thought you said your shift was over.”
“When you passed out, my plan was to put you to bed up here, then head out to the hospital to check on Cap. And then I was probably going to make my way to 47 to make sure everyone else is all good.”
“But I’m awake. I want to go with you.”
I run my palms up the backs of her calves in what I hope is a soothing gesture. “You need to rest, Lila. You’ve burned through a lot of adrenaline.”
“So have you.”
“It’s my job. I’m used to it.”
“You have a pathological need to take care of others,” she whispers. “But I think it’s important you take care of yourself, too.”
“I’m fine,” I insist. “Will you at least lay down for a few minutes?”
Lila looks like she might protest, but when I reach for a throw pillow and plop it down on the far end of the sofa, she gives in with a quiet sigh and moves to lay down across the cushions.
I shift on the floor to sit by her head, feeling bold enough in this darkness to tenderly brush her wild strands of hair off her face.
She gazes at me for a moment. “Can I tell you something?”
I trace my thumb along the smooth curve of her jaw. “Sure.”
“You’re one of my favorite people that I’ve ever met.”
At those words, I feel a strange sensation inside my chest. Like something breaking and mending at the same time, something releasing and reforming in tandem with my stuttered breathing.
“You haven’t known me long,” I murmur to her.
Lila’s hand comes up to circle around my wrist, halting my movements so that my palm is resting against the side of her head. “Don’t argue with me, Doc. I’m the expert on my favorite things, not you.”
I chuckle quietly.
But then I think about the two others currently vying for her heart.
About Hale, who hasn’t allowed himself to fall for anyone in all the time I’ve known him. Not until Lila came into our lives and rattled his carefully constructed barriers.
And Noah, who puts on a good show of being lighthearted and unbothered, but would never admit to needing even half as much love as what he gives to others.
They deserve her, and she would be happy and safe with either one of them.
So who am I to want her just the same?
I think about all the stress in my life. The custody situation, the fate of Station 47, the uncertainty of my career, the lingering grief of being widowed young… with all of that to bear, I shouldn’t have room for anything else.
But I do. Because love for Lila doesn’t feel like another burden added to the pile. It feels like a balm, like an extra pair of hands helping me hold it all up.
And it’s true that I haven’t known her long, but I’ve been a grown man long enough to understand what love looks like whenever it comes around.
Maybe I have no right to love her, but how can I convince myself of that while she’s gazing at me through the dark like I’m the one who hung the stars in the sky for her to admire?
“Don’t go anywhere,” she breathes. “Please.”
“I won’t,” I promise.
I expect her to close her eyes, to drift away into the protective world of darkness that the brain concocts for us after we go through something particularly stressful. But it’s clear that Lila has already made it to the other side of that. She’s wired now. Wide awake.
And so am I.
“Evan?”
“Hm?”
“Will you kiss me again?”
Again, because we were interrupted the first time.
Desire flares deep in my abdomen because I know that we couldn’t have gone much further down on the weightlifting bench in the station’s gym, but here…
Here, in the quiet of my living room, with Leo and Rosa both heavy sleepers enclosed in their rooms on the opposite end of the apartment…
I don’t answer with words. I lean down, smiling as she tilts her head on the pillow, gasping softly when our lips meet.
It starts soft—tender, reassuring. But the smoke still clings to our skin, and the adrenaline hasn’t fully burned off. The kiss ignites fast. She fists my shirt, tugging me closer. “Come here,” she whispers against my mouth, voice trembling with need. “I want you closer.”
I should stop this, let her rest. But she’s pulling me in, and resistance crumbles.
She parts her thighs wide, making room. I settle between them, the couch creaking softly as I cover her body with mine.
Her skirt rides higher; my hips slot perfectly against hers.
When she feels me hardening, thick and insistent against her, she moans into my mouth, low and needy, hips rolling up to grind against me.
“We have to be quiet,” I warn, voice rough, already strained.
She nods, exhaling shakily, then pulls me back in.
We devour each other, tongues sliding slow and filthy, breaths mingling hot and urgent, hands roaming everywhere.
She nips my bottom lip hard enough to sting, then soothes it with her tongue, grinding up against my erection again, deliberate and teasing.
I swallow the whimper that follows, my control fraying.