Chapter 30
HANDS UP (LEO)
Ray walks the perimeter of the ring with the stopwatch in hand, eyes on my feet instead of my fists.
The wraps are tight. Tape clean. No loose ends. I wouldn’t be here if I allowed for any.
He watches me move through the pattern again. Jab. Slip. Step out. Reset.
The silence stretches, my lungs starting to burn. Then he says it, flat and final. “Friday, you belong to camp. This week, we fix what’s still sloppy.”
He clicks the stopwatch. “Again.”
I go again.
The bell over the gym door buzzes.
Finn O’Reilly steps in with a cap low over his eyes and a duffel over one shoulder, acting like this place is a secret. Which, for the Defenders, it is. His head coach would have an aneurysm if he knew his star forward was sparring in his time off.
Ray sweeps him once with a look that says he already regrets this.
Finn lifts two fingers. “Coach.”
Ray points at me instead. “Again.”
Finn drifts to the apron. “So this is what it takes to see you now. Gym rendezvous. Very romantic.”
I don’t answer.
Jab. Slip. Reset.
“How’s Liz?” he asks.
Ray’s eyes flick to him. A sharp warning.
Finn lifts a hand. “What? Normal question.”
“You here to work or gossip, O’Reilly?” Ray says.
“Work.” Then, quieter to me, “You two real?”
I keep moving. “She’s still wearing it.”
That shuts him up.
After Jessica’s office, I expected Liz to pull back. Take the ring off. Hand it back like evidence. She didn’t. She walked out with it still on her finger. She stepped into my hand in the hallway.
It isn’t a promise.
But it isn’t nothing.
I look at Finn. “Hands up.”
His grin comes back. “On it.”
Ray jerks his chin toward the bench. “Wrap. One round. Big gloves. Controlled. Then you’re off my mat.”
Finn salutes with the wrap. “Yes, Coach.”
I check my phone once between rounds.
No message.
Good.
I hate that I wanted one anyway.
I put it away.
Ray doesn’t even look at me. “Eyes here.”
“Yes.”
The bell buzzes again. Lukas steps onto the mat with a small bag over one shoulder, already belonging to the room.
Ray turns to Finn. “After this, you’re with Lukas.”
I peel my gloves off, grab the mitts, and step down.
Work first. Always.
I’m parked half a block from the ambulance bay, leaning against my car.
From here, I can see the sliding doors, the bright wash of fluorescent light, the blur of scrubs moving in and out like the building is breathing.
Then Liz steps through, and it’s just her.
Hair pulled back tight. Green scrubs creased and stained. Tired in a way that makes her sharper. Still carrying the shift in her body.”
Marco walks beside her in that easy way old friends get to. He hands her balloons and a card. Other staff hover around her too—a couple of nurses, someone in scrubs, a few faces I recognize from drop-offs and pickups over the past weeks.
Then a man comes through the doors behind them.
Tall. Late thirties. White coat over his scrubs, ID badge swinging. The kind of build that says he used to play something in college and still misses being good at it.
He says something to Liz, and she turns toward him, and whatever it is makes her laugh—not the polite version, the real one, the one that takes over her whole face before she can catch it.
He touches her arm when he says goodbye.
Not the way Marco does, loose and familiar. Different. A half second longer than necessary. His hand staying there just past the point of professional.
Liz doesn’t notice.
I do.
From thirty feet away, I clock it the same way I clock a tell in the ring—the micro-shift, the fraction of extra hold, the thing that means something even when it looks like nothing.
My back teeth come together.
I make them loosen.
For one ugly second, the instinct is simple—cross the sidewalk, step into the space, make it clear she’s not standing there alone.
I don’t move.
I make my hands uncurl one finger at a time and keep my face blank.
He says something else. She smiles again, warm and easy, already turning back to Marco and the balloons. The doctor watches her go for exactly one beat too long before he heads back inside.
She has no idea.
That’s the part that gets me. Not the doctor. Not the look. The fact that she moved through it completely unaware, comfortable in her own skin, belonging to herself the way she always does—and someone noticed, the way people notice things they want.
The way I notice things I want.
I don’t have the right to move over there, to claim her as mine.
What I have is thirty feet of sidewalk and the specific, ugly discipline of a man who knows exactly what he’s feeling and has decided not to do anything about it yet.
She looks back at the hospital once more before turning toward the car.
The fluorescent light. The ambulance bay. The controlled chaos that has been her world for years.
Her expression shifts.
Not quite grief. Not quite relief.
Marco leans toward her, says something into her ear as he spots me, then lifts a hand in a wave.
When Liz sees me, her whole face changes. The tension she carried out of the bay gives a little, just enough to show me she was waiting for somewhere to set it down.
“Hey there, champ,” Marco calls as they get closer. “Please tell me you’ve got one of your friends lined up for a double date.”
Liz’s balloons bob behind her as she steps into me and slides her hand into mine.
It feels like a reflex. I like it.
“Thanks for walking her out,” I tell Marco. “And no. None of my guys are single. Somehow.”
Marco clicks his tongue, theatrically disappointed, then turns back to Liz. “Next week. Dinner and dancing. I’m not letting you disappear into whatever comes after this.”
“Next week,” Liz says easily. Her attention catches on me for a half second. Checking. The ring flashes. She doesn’t hide it.
“Good,” Marco says. Then, to me, with a pointed finger, “Don’t mess it up.”
Liz groans. “Go.”
Marco laughs and heads back toward the doors, and the hospital swallows him again.
I guide her to the car. She doesn’t speak until we’re both inside and the doors shut, muffling the world.
“Last shift,” I say quietly.
She stares through the windshield. “Yeah.”
“How does it feel?”
She’s quiet long enough that I think she won’t answer.
“Like I’m stepping off a cliff,” she says finally, “and hoping I land somewhere that still feels like me.”
Her hand turns the ring once.
“What if I’m not good at this? Med school. What if I was only ever good at the doing, not the learning?”
I settle my hand on her knee. “You’re good at both.”
She doesn’t look convinced.
“You rebuilt your whole life from scratch. You worked nights, got into NYU, and kept standing. You really think classes are the thing that takes you out?”
She takes that in without answering.
“I don’t know how to not be a nurse.”
“You’ll still be a nurse. You’re just becoming a doctor too.”
“It’s not the same.” Her voice drops to a whisper. “In there, I knew who I was.”
She doesn’t finish.
I squeeze her knee once. “Now you step into something new.”
She leans her head back against the seat.
“Okay.”
She doesn’t sound sure.
My place is cool when we walk in. The city hum stays outside with the click of the lock.
“You’re done,” I say.
She drops her bag by the door and leans back against the wall, eyes closing. Her fingers brush the ring like she’s checking whether it’s still there.
“Done,” she echoes.
Then she opens her eyes. “I’m not going to see my parents next week. I’m staying in New York.”
I step closer. “Here?”
“If that’s okay.”
“It’s more than okay.”
“I’ll have the place to myself most of the time.”
The realization seems to land as she says it. The first week in months with no work and no me to orbit around.
“You’ll be okay?” I ask carefully.
“I don’t know,” she admits. “I’ll cook, I guess.”
I guide her toward the kitchen and open the fridge. Two labeled containers come out of a row already stacked with the rest.
“Meals are handled,” I say.
She narrows her eyes. “Handled by whom?”
“My nutritionist and a meal service.” I set the containers on the counter. “Try it. If you hate it, we change it.”
I plate the food. Chicken, potatoes, vegetables.
She eats, then looks up with reluctant approval. “This is really good.”
“Good.”
Camp starts Friday. My schedule stops belonging to me. And still, my brain starts building contingencies for her before I can shut it down.
Rides. Check-ins. Protection.
Drake’s been quiet. Too quiet. But quiet doesn’t mean gone.
I kill the list before it shows on my face. The second she feels managed, she’ll run.
So I keep it light. “What are you going to do with the week?”
She carries her plate to the dishwasher. “I don’t know. I’ve never had a week with nothing to do. No shifts. No studying yet. Just time.”
“You wanted to go to Germany.”
She looks at me. “I wanted to be here.”
“Yeah?”
“With you.”
The words land low and sharp. Not because they surprise me. Because part of me has been waiting to hear them all week.
Her thumb strokes the ring once. Then she looks at me.
“Are we ever going to talk about it?” she asks quietly. “The ring.”
The question is calm. Her eyes aren’t.
I push my empty plate away. “I like you wearing it. I like you here with me.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
I hold her gaze. “The ring means nothing you don’t want it to mean. It’s not a lock.”
Her mouth presses tight. “What if I don’t know what I want it to mean?”
That honesty hits harder than if she’d pulled away.
“You don’t have to know yet. You can keep wearing it while you figure it out.”
“And if I take it off?”
The thought lands like losing ground I didn’t know I’d started counting.
“Then you take it off. You don’t need my permission.”
She studies my face. “Would it bother you?”
I could lie. We’re past that.
“Yeah,” I admit. “It would.”
“Okay,” she says softly. “Then I’ll keep wearing it.”
“Because I want you to?”
“Because I want to.”