Chapter 8
GUARD UP (LIZ)
Brooklyn Hospital is about thirty minutes from Leo’s place in Williamsburg—still shorter than my usual commute from the Upper East Side. By six-fifteen, I’m showered, in scrubs, and ready to bolt.
When I step into the kitchen, I find Leo holding a glass. Something green. Opaque. Ominous.
“Drink,” he says, pressing it into my hand.
I eye it suspiciously. “Thanks?” Then take a cautious sip.
It’s... better than it looks.
Leo watches me with quiet focus, tracking every reaction. “It’s pea protein. Figured you wouldn’t want whey.”
“Oh.” I blink, thrown that he’d even thought about it.
He hands me a travel coffee cup. “Blue Mountain. Splash of oat milk. Let’s go.”
Wait, what?
“I can’t go anywhere. My shift starts at seven.”
He heads for the door, which is an answer.
“Leo.” I follow him. “I need to go to work.”
He pauses, one brow lifting, like the answer should’ve been obvious.
“Exactly.”
Outside, he steers me toward a black Range Rover and opens the door.
“I was going to take the L train.”
But the protest dies quickly, and I get in.
We drive through a city still waking up, a Huberman Lab episode playing about dopamine cycles, as if this were routine. As if I hadn’t spent four years making sure no man drove me anywhere.
At the curb, he leans across the console. “Text me when you’re inside.”
“I’m not—”
His gaze catches mine.
“Pick you up at five?”
I laugh despite myself. “Thank you for driving me.”
The second the sliding doors swallow me, I text him. Annoyed at my own compliance. More annoyed that he’d been right to expect it.
My shift is ten hours of controlled chaos.
A car accident comes in at nine—driver with a steering wheel to the chest, passenger with glass embedded in her face. I’m on the passenger.
“Vitals stable,” I call out, already assessing. “Get me a tray. I need to irrigate before we can see how deep this goes.”
The attending steps back and gives me the bay. My hands are steady. My voice is calm. I don’t flinch when the patient screams. I’ve done this a thousand times.
The glass comes out easily. Sixteen pieces, ranging from splinters to a shard the size of my thumb. No major nerve damage. No arterial bleeding. Clean extractions, one by one.
The attending checks the wound. “Nice work, Adler.”
I move to the next bay.
Here, I’m not ornamental. I’m necessary.
A drunk patient tries to fight a nurse in bay three. Security handles it. A teenager comes in crying because her boyfriend broke up with her over text. I let her cry into my shoulder while I chart her sprained ankle.
A woman arrives later with a fractured wrist and a story that doesn’t line up. She says she slipped on the stairs. Her eyes say something else.
I chart what she tells me. I don’t push. I’ve learned pushing costs more than it gives.
But I slip her a card for a domestic violence hotline on my way out.
She palms it without looking at me.
Some things you can’t save people from. You can only leave the door open.
I earned this. Every double shift. Every exam retaken. Every choice that didn’t look like the brochure version of becoming a doctor.
I quit pre-med when Travis got violent. Ran. Rebuilt. Came back through nursing because it was the fastest way back into medicine.
Hospitals don’t care why you left. Only whether you can handle what’s in front of you now.
And I can.
Here, no one cares what your last name used to be, or why you flinch when a man’s hand closes too fast around your arm. The monitors beep. The charts stack. The work keeps moving.
Everyone bleeds the same.
It’s the only place I’ve ever felt fully safe in my own skin.
Tonight, I’ll be decorative. His. For the cameras and sponsors and everyone asking why the U.S. heavyweight champion swung his fists in a Brooklyn club.
My mind shifts to survival mode.
Six weeks.
Long enough for Jessica to bury the story. Long enough for Travis to disappear back into whatever hole he crawled out of. Long enough for Leo’s career to stay intact.
After that—
I stop myself.
I don’t make plans yet. I just keep breathing.
If I leave too soon, Leo pays the price. Not just PR. The commission. The title. Everything that keeps his life whole.
He wouldn’t be in this position if Travis hadn’t put his hands on me.
And Eden. My best friend. My roommate. If Leo gets burned because of me, it doesn’t just hit him, it hits her. Her brother. Her family.
So I’ll stay long enough to stabilize the optics.
Not because I owe him.
Because leaving now would make things worse.
But then I’m gone.
Every time the doors hiss open, I look up. Force of habit.
At five p.m., when I step into the sticky summer heat, Leo is parked at the curb, watching the entrance.
That does more damage than it has any right to.
He gets out, takes one look at my face, and opens the passenger door.
“You don’t have to do that,” I say.
He barely pauses.
“I want to,” he says. “But tell me if you don’t.”
Now it’s seven p.m., back in his apartment. He handed me dinner before I could even take my shoes off. I ate standing at the counter, too tired to argue, too wired to taste much.
A dress Jessica sent over hangs from the closet door—less like fabric, more like a dare.
Tonight, I smile and let cameras take what they want.
Tonight, I walk into a room full of strangers with Leo Carver’s hand on my back and pretend I don’t feel it everywhere.
I stare at my reflection—face made up, hair blown out and styled—and summon the version of me that can do this without cracking.
The version that keeps it simple. Casual. No entanglements.
That was the version I walked into Schimanski with.
Now I’m living inside the aftermath of a fight I didn’t start, in a man’s apartment I wasn’t supposed to sleep in. What stays with me is the way he looked at me this morning, like my needs were his problem to solve.
Like he’d decided something.
“Okay,” I whisper.
I slip on the dress. Emerald silk. Clean lines. Backless in a way that isn’t asking permission. The fabric skims my hips, follows muscle instead of softening it.
I run my fingers over the fabric once, then force myself to stop. In the mirror, the reflection is alarming.
I look capable.
I look expensive.
I look like someone who won’t be derailed again.
I reach for my heels, slip them on, fasten the clasp. A breath in. A breath out.
Ready.
When I step into the living room, Leo is waiting.
Black tux. Jacket open. Bow tie undone at the throat. Sharp lines and impossible shoulders that make the entire room feel smaller.
He looks down at his phone, then looks up.
“Hey,” I say.
He puts the phone down like it suddenly matters where his hands are. “You look...” He stops, then tries again. “You look stunning.”
The compliment is simple. His eyes are not.
His attention lingers at the low dip of my back. I feel the weight of it, like his hand has already traced the line. I smooth the front of the dress. “Jessica has good taste.”
“She does,” he says quietly, taking a step toward me. Then another.
He stops in front of me. Near enough that I feel warmth radiating off him. Near enough that the faint spice of his cologne sinks into my breath. Cedar and something woodsy and dark.
For one suspended moment, he just looks at me.
His gaze drops to where the dress dips low on my back and lingers again.
When his eyes return to mine, they’re darker. “We should go,” he says, voice rougher than before.
But he doesn’t move.
Neither do I.
Finally, he offers his arm. When my hand settles into the crook of his elbow, I feel the warmth of him through the jacket. I don’t pull away fast enough to mean it.
The elevator ride down is silent. The doors slide open, letting us onto the street. He opens the passenger door and waits.
He gets in beside me, adjusts his jacket, starts the engine. For a moment we sit there, neither speaking.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Yes.” Too quickly. Then more honestly, “I think so.”
He keeps driving.
As he pulls into traffic, his hand rests lightly on the console. The city lights slide past the windows, streaking gold and white.
“It’ll be straightforward,” he says. “Stay close. I’ll handle the questions. If you need a break, just tell me.”
“That sounds suspiciously easy.”
“It is.”
His hand shifts on the gearshift—not touching me, but near enough to register.
“This is temporary,” I blurt out.
I don’t know whom I’m reminding.
Because it doesn’t feel temporary in his presence. He treats it like a vow, and that makes it harder to breathe through the lie.
His profile stays still. “Everything is.”
We fall quiet. The car moves through evening traffic.
Something is different about him tonight.
Not dramatic. Not loud. Just... decided.
He decided I’d drink the smoothie.
He decided I’d ride in the Range Rover.
He decided he’d be waiting at five.
And I didn’t argue. Not once.
What gets me isn’t what he’s doing. It’s how familiar it feels.
The smoothie I didn’t ask for. The ride I didn’t need. The dinner handed to me before I could speak.
I press my forehead to the cool glass. The city light streaks gold past the window, and I keep my breathing even.
Six weeks. I’ve done harder things than this.
What I don’t know yet is whether I’ll recognize the moment before it costs me something I didn’t plan to give.
I already didn’t argue about the smoothie.