Chapter 2
Clare
The man weighed a metric ton of solid muscle and terrible life choices.
The service door slammed shut behind us, wind screaming protest as I shoved it closed with my hip. Xavier’s weight dragged me sideways, my shoulder hitting the doorframe hard enough to jar. He didn’t make a sound. Unconscious or too far gone to register pain€| neither was good.
Snow whipped through the gap before the latch caught. I locked it, fingers clumsy with cold and panic, while half-dragging a dying man across my threshold.
Outstanding life choices, Clare. Really racking up the wins tonight.
The apartment was barely warmer than outside. My breath fogged in sharp bursts as I hauled him toward the bed, his tactical boots scraping across the concrete floor. Dead weight. Almost literal.
Halfway across the room, his legs buckled completely. I went down with him, knees cracking against the floor, his body sprawled half across mine.
Heat radiated from him despite the hypothermia, fever climbing, his body fighting too many battles at once. How the hell was he still alive?
I became aware of his size then, the solid weight of him, lean muscle and controlled power even unconscious. His head rested against my shoulder, blood matting his hair, his breath shallow against my throat.
My pulse kicked up for reasons that had nothing to do with exertion.
Stop it. Move.
I shoved upright, grabbed him under the arms, and dragged. His head lolled back. More blood dripped onto my floor, joining the trail we’d left. Five feet. Three. The bed frame hit the backs of my knees, and I dropped him onto the mattress less than gently.
He didn’t react.
That scared me more than the blood.
The radiator clanked in the corner, mocking. I crossed the room in three strides and kicked it. Hard. The metal rattled, coughed, and went silent. No heat. Never any goddamn heat.
“Fantastic.” I grabbed the kettle, slammed it under the faucet. Water pressure was shit tonight. I shoved it onto the stove, cranked the burner to maximum. Blue flame erupted. Not enough. Nowhere near enough heat to warm this frozen tomb of an apartment.
He was shivering so hard the bed frame creaked. Violent, uncontrolled tremors. Advanced hypothermia. His core temperature was dropping into the ‘you’re-dying’ range. Technical medical term, that.
I yanked open the bathroom cabinet, already knowing what I’d find. Bandages. Antiseptic. Ibuprofen. Precisely nothing adequate for the trauma disaster bleeding out on my bed.
Back to the bedroom. Xavier hadn’t moved, sprawled where I’d dropped him, tactical gear soaked and frozen. The gear had to come off. All of it. Now.
I grabbed the scissors from the kitchen drawer — the good ones I’d stolen from the clinic — and returned to the bed. Knelt beside him. Hesitated.
His chest rose and fell in a labored rhythm. Wet sound underneath, like something rattling loose. Possible pneumonia from the river water. Add it to the list.
Stop stalling. Cut.
I straddled his hips, grabbed the tactical vest, found the seam, and started cutting. Kevlar parted under sharp blades, falling away in sections. Then the shirt underneath, blood-soaked and frozen to his skin. I peeled it back, fabric sticking, and…
My hands stilled.
His torso came into view. Lean muscle, the kind that came from necessity, not vanity. Pale skin marred with scars, surgical precision at the base of his neck, jagged violence across his ribs. The map of a life I couldn’t begin to read. Combat body. Weapon body.
Warmth flooded my face.
I became aware of my position, kneeling over him, one hand braced on his bare chest, the other holding scissors against skin. Too close. Too aware.
His breathing caught. Rattled. Wet.
Shame flooded me like ice water.
What are you doing? He’s dying, and you’re what? Checking him out? Jesus Christ, Clare.
I moved again, faster, shoving the awareness down hard. Professional. Clinical. Just a patient. Another body, another set of injuries, nothing more.
I cut away the last of his shirt, tossed fabric onto the floor. Forced myself to catalogue the damage systematically.
Three lacerations across his ribs, edges clean. Recent. None deep enough for immediate concern but all still seeping. I grabbed gauze and pressed it to the worst one. His skin was too cold under my palm, his breathing too shallow.
The head wound came next. I brushed blood-matted hair aside, found the laceration running from temple to crown. Deep. Bone visible underneath. It needed stitches. Proper stitches, by someone who’d actually been to medical school and had the license to prove it.
I grabbed the surgical glue I kept for emergencies. Close enough.
Headlights swept across my windows.
I froze. Police cruiser rolling slow down the street, beams painting warehouses across the way. Looking for someone. Looking for him.
My body moved before thought, stepping between Xavier and the window, one hand hitting the light switch. The apartment plunged into darkness, broken only by amber streetlight glow and blue flame from the stove.
I stood there, heart hammering, shielding a stranger with my body while police hunted him outside.
The cruiser crawled past. Searchlights swept the alley behind my building, visible through the kitchen window, and my stomach dropped. The blood trail. They’d see the blood trail leading straight to my door.
But the wind howled, snow falling thick and fast. Maybe it had covered our tracks. Maybe.
The cruiser’s engine faded. I counted to thirty before breathing again.
When I turned back, Xavier’s eyes were open.
Just slits, unfocused and glassy, but watching me. Watching me protect him from the police outside. No recognition in that gaze. No understanding. But something underneath — awareness that I’d moved to shield him, that I’d killed the lights to hide him.
“You’re safe,” I said. The words came out automatically. “Just stay still.”
His eyes closed again.
I grabbed a towel and shoved it under the tap. The water ran freezing, the boiler was as broken as everything else in this place, but I wrung it out and returned to the bed. Pressed it to his chest, checking his core temperature by touch. Still too cold. Warming too slowly.
The kettle started screaming. I grabbed it, dumped the boiling water into my largest mixing bowl, and carried it to the bedside. Steam rose in clouds. I soaked the towel in scalding water, wrung it out fast before my hands could register the burn, and pressed the heated fabric to his chest.
He sucked in air. Sharp. Pained. But his shivering eased slightly.
I worked in rotation. Heat towel, apply, check vitals, repeat. His pulse fluttered under my fingertips, too fast, too weak. I pressed my palm flat against his chest, counting beats, feeling the labor of his breathing. His heart fought under my hand, refusing to quit despite the odds.
I pulled my hand away and grabbed another towel. Focused on the task. Just the task.
But my pulse was doing things that had nothing to do with clinical assessment.
For the next twenty minutes I cycled through the same routine: heat, apply, check vitals. The microwave hummed as I rotated towels through it, faster than boiling water. My shoulders screamed. My hands went numb. His color improved by degrees so small I might have imagined them.
By the time his shivering reduced to occasional tremors, I’d touched him a hundred times.
Chest, throat, wrists, checking his pulse over and over.
Each time aware of skin-on-skin contact, the intimacy of it, the way my hands were learning the landscape of his body, scars, muscle, the places he’d been broken and healed.
Stop. Noticing.
I forced my focus to the injuries that still needed addressing. The head wound, glued shut, crude but functional. The lacerations, bandaged and controlled. Blood loss, critical but not immediately fatal if I could keep him stable.
The shoulder.
I’d been avoiding it. But it sat at the wrong angle, swollen and displaced, the joint visible under skin. Dislocated. Badly.
It had to be relocated. Soon, before swelling made it impossible. And I had absolutely no anesthetic to offer.
I closed my eyes. Forced my breathing steady.
This was going to hurt. Both of us.
I positioned myself beside him, hands hovering over his arm. All that knowledge and emergency training as a nurse surfaced — anterior dislocation reduction, standard technique. Grip above the elbow, position the scapula, and pull with steady rotation.
All done while the patient was sedated, and you had backup, and this wasn’t being performed in a freezing apartment by someone whose hands shook.
I gripped his arm. His skin was warming now, fever climbing. Infection setting in already or his body’s stress response didn’t matter. I had to do this.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
Then I pulled.
His body arched off the bed, convulsing despite unconsciousness. A sound ripped from his throat — raw, broken, barely human. My grip slipped on sweat-slicked skin. I adjusted, braced my knee against the mattress, and pulled harder.
The joint resisted. Held. His breathing went ragged, fast shallow gasps, drowning on dry land.
Finish it. Don’t stop now.
I rotated steadily, fighting every instinct screaming to let go, to spare him this. His muscles locked rigid under my hands. Another sound, sharper this time, pain breaking through whatever dark place he’d gone to escape consciousness.
Every nerve I possessed wanted to stop. Pull back. Find another way that didn’t involve torturing someone already half-dead.
There was no other way.
The shoulder popped with a wet sound that turned my stomach. His body went limp all at once, the tension draining in an instant. I released him, stumbling back, hands shaking so hard I had to grip the bedframe.
He didn’t move. Didn’t make another sound. Just that shallow, labored breathing.
I pressed my fingers to his throat, counting pulse. Too fast. Too weak. Thready. But there.