JENSEN
I know the smell of hospital rooms the way other people remember the smell of their childhood kitchen.
I spent enough nights in places like this during my mother’s last year to have it permanently encoded in my DNA.
The second I carried Sloane through those ER doors, a switch flipped like muscle memory as fear engulfed me.
Fear, along with a huge helping of regret for letting this happen on my watch. For not paying close enough attention. I won’t make that mistake again.
I nodded at the right moments and asked informed questions. Gave them as many details as I knew about her medical history, and then made a phone call so the people who know her better than me could fill in the rest.
Sloane’s brother doesn’t fuck around. Within fifteen minutes of dialing Avah’s number, Jeremy Winslow did whatever it is that billionaires do to throw their weight around.
Sloane was transferred to a private room on the hospital’s oncology floor, with a team of doctors at her beck and call.
Not that she realized it or asked for special treatment, but I’m damn grateful.
She’s been sleeping peacefully for almost six hours, ever since the IV antibiotics kicked in and her fever started dropping.
The doctors said it was a viral infection, compounded by immune suppression and physical exhaustion.
They used words like precautionary and manageable, delivered in a practiced clinical tone that has to be taught as part of the med school curriculum.
I’ve been sitting in the chair next to her bed, checking the pulse oximeter like it’s my job, since a nurse took pity on me shortly after Sloane was admitted. The old habit fired right up, and I slid back into the bedside vigil like it hadn’t been two decades since I’d been here before.
My mother’s oxygen regularly dropped into the low nineties near the end.
The alarm would sound, and I’d sit up straighter and hold her hand and tell her everything was going to be fine, while Jamie stayed home because he couldn’t handle hospitals.
At nineteen, I didn’t know the first thing about fine. But someone had to say it.
Sloane shifts in her sleep, and my spine goes rigid. Her fingers twitch against the sheet, and I lean forward to confirm she’s still breathing steadily. The monitor beeps its dependable rhythm, so I ease back.
She’s going to be pissed that I called Avah in order to reach Jeremy.
Calling her people might be deemed a direct violation of everything she’s been fighting for.
But she’s immunocompromised, and she passed out from the fever, which, based on her history, could have meant sepsis.
I’ve heard enough medical terminology in my life to know which combinations demand a tough call.
My mother spent years keeping secrets about how bad it really was because she didn’t want to worry us.
By the time Jamie and I understood the full picture, it was too late for anything but watching her go.
Even if there was a minuscule chance of Sloane’s condition being life-threatening, the risk was too much.
I’d make the call to her brother again without hesitation.
I failed my mother, and every person I’ve taken care of since has been, in some way, trying to rewrite that ending.
And I’m in love with Sloane, but I don’t know where loving her ends and needing to save her begins.
“You look so serious.”
I startle and glance up to find her blue eyes are fixed on me with an alertness that doesn’t match the pallor of her skin or the IV snaking into her arm.
I scoot the chair closer and take her hand. Her skin is regular warm, not the scorching heat of eight hours ago, and a breath I didn’t know I was holding releases inch by inch.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Why are you sorry? I’m the one who cost you a night of sleep.” She flashes a wan smile. “And at your age, you need your beauty rest.”
She’s going to be the death of me.
“What time is it?”
“Almost ten.”
“Wow.” She blinks. “I guess I’m the one who needed a nap.” Her gaze drops to the IV in her arm, and a bleak look flickers across her face. “God, I hate these things. I have poke PTSD for sure.”
I know what she’s doing. Wrapping the heaviness in a joke so it’s easier to carry. But I can’t match her lightness right now.
“I’ve been sitting here going over everything I got wrong.
” I press my thumb against her knuckles.
“You had to do the lion’s share of the work on the trail because I was hurting.
And I knew we should have flown to Tahoe instead of tackling a long-ass drive.
We didn’t need to close down the bar last night, but you felt so good in my arms.” I scrub a hand over my jaw and hold her gaze, willing her to understand.
“I kept choosing what I wanted over what you needed, and I’m so fucking sorry. ”
She slides her fingers out of mine and sets her hand on the blanket. “I can take care of myself.” Her voice is flat in a way I haven’t heard since the bookstore in Skylark. “That’s the whole point of why I’m here.”
“I thought the point was meeting your hero.”
“She was a means to an end.” Anger and frustration flare in her eyes. “And the end is that I refuse to be defined by having cancer.”
“Nobody’s trying to define you, Sloane. I just want to keep you safe.”
“I don’t want safe.” She says it like the word leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.
“I mean, I do. But that’s not all I want.
I want adventure and to be brave even when it’s scary.
I spent a year letting a disease decide what was good for me.
What I could eat, where I could go, how many stairs I could climb before a nurse needed to check my pulse. I’m done with that, Jensen.”
“You’ve been plenty brave.” I lean forward, elbows on my knees.
“I know what it takes to win the kind of fight you’re in.
And it’s easier when someone’s looking out for you instead of the other way around.
It’s a lesson my mother never learned. At the end, she was more worried about Jamie and me than—”
“I’m not your mother.”
The words cut straight to the nerve. Not because of her tone, which is almost flat. Because of how swiftly they find it. I realize she’s not angry. She’s afraid of becoming another broken thing for me to arrange my life around.
“I know,” I manage.
“Do you?”
“This is who I am. I take care of the people I—”
The door opens and Jeremy Winslow enters the room with the authority of a man who knows he’s at the top of the food chain.
Avah is half a step behind him, worry tight across her features.
Another one of Sloane’s friends—who’s familiar from that afternoon in the bookstore, but I can’t name—brings up the rear.
Sloane’s gaze swings from them to me, and the look of betrayal on her face cracks me wide open.
“Did you call my brother?”
“I had Avah’s number.”
I watch every inch of ground I’ve gained over this past week crumble in real time. All of it erased by a single phone call.
A call I’d still make. Because she’s more important than anything, especially my happiness.
Jeremy crosses to the bed and leans down, placing a hand on her shoulder. “You scared the hell out of us.”
“Again,” Avah adds, rolling her eyes when her voice cracks. She moves to Sloane’s other side and takes her hand.
The other woman squeezes Sloane’s foot through the blanket. “I came along because I still want to kick Kristen Quinn’s ass for being such a disappointment.”
“Me too,” Avah agrees.
“No ass kicking.” Sloane manages a smile, and I can tell she’s happy to see them. But the arm not connected to the IV crosses over her stomach, and I recognize it as a gesture of protection. She’s protecting herself, and I put her in a position where she needs to do it.
“I’m fine,” she tells them. “Lots of people get infections.”
“You aren’t lots of people,” Jeremy says roughly, and I hear the worry and affection in his voice.
“Yeah, well…” Her chin trembles, and she glances at the ceiling. “You could have just FaceTimed.”
“What’s the use of having a private jet if you can’t jet around?” Avah asks, smoothing a strand of hair from Sloane’s face.
Jeremy turns to me and extends his hand. “We haven’t officially met. Jeremy Winslow.”
“Jensen Grant.”
His handshake is firm, and he holds my gaze for a beat longer than necessary. “Thanks for calling.”
The relief is so acute that my knees almost buckle. At least someone thinks I did the right thing. For one second, standing in front of her brother, I feel like I’m on solid ground.
“You shouldn’t have called him,” Sloane says.
Turns out I’m standing in quicksand.
She’s glaring at me now, her blue eyes filled with a hurt far worse than anger. She trusted me to let her be strong, and I broke it the second things got hard.
I don’t know what else I could have done. Still, it’s clear I don’t belong here anymore. The wilderness adventure is officially over.
Maybe we were always on borrowed time, and the clock just ran out.
I stand. “I should get going.” The words I need to say next clog in my throat, and I have to force them out. “I’m flying back to Nashville this afternoon.”
Sloane’s breath catches, and her fingers curl into the hospital blanket. The heart monitor beside her bed quickens, a tiny acceleration that no one seems to notice. But I do, because I’ve been listening to the steady rhythm for four hours.
The truth is, I don’t have a flight booked, but her people are here now, and I’m irrelevant. She doesn’t need me. She never did. But a stupid, sorry piece of me wants her to tell me not to go. To hear her say it. And I’d stay. I’d blow up every plan I had for her.
“Thank you for babysitting me.” She shifts her body away from me like she doesn’t have a choice, not even wincing when the IV line tugs against her arm with the movement.
I shake my head, meeting Avah’s almost sympathetic gaze on the other side of the bed. “Sloane, you know it wasn’t—”
“It’s fine, Jensen. You served your purpose.” She sounds as broken as I feel. I did that, and I hate myself for it. “Just go.”
She’s voicing the exact fear I confessed to Cody. That my value begins and ends with being useful. Only she’s doing it because I hurt her first.
And the thing that will haunt me long after I leave this room is that none of it’s true. I’ve never for one second felt burdened by Sloane. It’s a goddamned honor to take care of her.
But I haven’t figured out how to love someone without wrapping myself around them so tight I smother whatever made them remarkable in the first place.
After twenty years of vigilance, I’m not sure I have the capacity to stand at her side—no matter how much I love her—without needing a job to justify my presence.
She’s staring at the IV in her arm, her mouth is pressed into a hard line. I know, like I know my own name, that she won’t watch me leave.
I want to take her face in my hands and make her understand that I’m not leaving because things got complicated. I’m leaving because I don’t know how to be at her side without standing in front of her. She deserves someone who won’t block her path.
So I pick up my flannel from the back of the chair and walk to the door. She doesn’t call me back.
The elevator doors open, and I step inside. As they slide shut, I catch my reflection in the steel—unshaven and hollow-eyed. I look suspiciously like my nineteen-year-old self, walking out of a different hospital after a different woman I loved stopped breathing.
Sloane is alive, and she’s going to be fine. Sloane Winslow doesn’t need anyone to save her. She’s already saved herself, and the best thing I can do is get out of her way. Even if it breaks a part of me I’ll never be able to fix.