Chapter 18 Harper
HARPER
I’d spent the entire weekend replaying Dr. Mercer’s words. “Knox Blackwood beat Doyle half to death. For you.” And then replaying that moment in the infirmary Friday afternoon—the gauze box, the collision of fingers, the heat that had spread through my hand like wildfire.
By Sunday night, I’d rehearsed about forty different ways to confront him. By Monday morning, I’d forgotten all of them.
Knox was already there when I arrived, mopping the floor like it was any other day. Like Friday hadn’t happened. Like there wasn’t a conversation hanging between us that I’d been carrying for two days.
“Morning,” he said.
“Morning.”
I busied myself with the charts on my desk, hyperaware of his presence the way I always was now. The soft scrape of the mop. The rhythm of his movements. The way the fluorescent lights caught the silver in his eyes when he finally glanced my way.
“Knox—”
A sharp curse cut me off.
I looked up to find Knox gripping his forearm, blood welling between his fingers. The supply cart beside him had a jagged edge where the metal had rusted and peeled back.
“Shit.” He held up his arm, and I could see the gash was deep enough to need attention. Cleaning, bandaging, and—
“When was your last tetanus shot?”
Knox frowned. “Before prison.”
“Then you’re getting one.” I pointed to the exam table. “Sit.”
Something flickered in his expression. Amusement maybe. Or satisfaction. Like he didn’t entirely mind being on the receiving end of my orders. Or the object of my undivided attention.
He sat.
I confirmed the date of his last tetanus vaccine, pulled on gloves, and gathered supplies, trying to ignore the way my pulse had kicked up.
This was different from all the other times I’d treated him.
Back then, he’d been a patient. An inmate with mysterious injuries that may or may not have been self-inflicted.
Now he was … something else. Something I couldn’t name.
“Roll up your sleeve higher.”
He complied, pushing the fabric up.
I’d seen his arms before. The tattoos. The veins. The corded muscle. But somehow, seeing his bicep up close, inches from my face as I prepared to clean his wound …
“Jesus.” The word slipped out before I could stop it.
Knox raised an eyebrow. “Problem?”
“Your arm is …” I searched for a professional way to say it. Failed. “That’s a lot of arm.”
His lips twitched. “Is that your medical assessment?”
“I’m just saying.” I focused on the wound, cheeks warming. “When you’re stuck behind a desk all day, you forget that some people actually have muscles.”
“You have muscles.”
“I have noodles that aspire to be muscles.” I dabbed antiseptic on the gash, and to his credit, he barely flinched. “You have … whatever this is. Did you bench-press the entire prison yard?”
“Not much else to do in here.” But there was warmth in his voice. Like he enjoyed this. Me, flustered and rambling. Him, watching me with those silver-blue eyes that saw too much.
“All right. Tetanus time.” I prepared the syringe, then paused. “This goes in your deltoid, so I’m going to need you to push that sleeve up higher. Or take the shirt off. Your choice.”
I’d meant it as a joke. But Knox reached behind his head, grabbed a fistful of fabric, and pulled.
The shirt came off in one fluid motion.
Holy. Shitake. Mushrooms.
I was a medical professional. I’d seen countless bodies. Examined hundreds of patients. This should have been no different.
It was so, so different.
Tattoos crawled across his chest and shoulders, intricate patterns disappearing into the waistband of his pants. His abs were defined enough to count. Twice. The pendant I’d noticed that first day rested against the hard planes of his chest, rising and falling with each steady breath.
And his shoulders. God, his shoulders. They were broad enough to block out the fluorescent lights above him, casting his chest in shadow while the rest of him stayed illuminated, like some kind of sculpture I wasn’t supposed to touch.
My throat went dry.
I realized, too late, that I’d stopped moving entirely. Syringe in hand. Frozen like an idiot.
Knox noticed.
Of course he noticed.
His head cocked slightly to the side, that assessing look I’d come to recognize. But this time, something else flickered behind it. Something heated.
How easy it would be to reach out and trace one of those tattoo lines with my fingertip.
“See something you like?” The smirk that tugged at his mouth wasn’t arrogant. It was knowing. Like he could read every single thought currently short-circuiting my brain.
“I’m assessing for additional injuries.” The lie came out breathless. Unconvincing.
Knox’s smirk deepened. He didn’t call me out on it. He didn’t have to.
“Take your time,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I was going to hell. Straight to hell. Do not pass go. Do not collect two hundred dollars.
I administered the shot with hands that were definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent steady, then found myself studying one of his tattoos.
It crawled up his forearm in elaborate black ink, but this section was different from the others I’d glimpsed on his neck and biceps.
This one was a bird mid-flight, wings spread wide, breaking free from a cage that dissolved into scattered fragments beneath it.
“What does this one mean?”
Knox followed my gaze. For a long moment, I thought he wouldn’t answer.
“Freedom,” he said finally. “The kind you give someone else.”
Something in his voice made my chest ache. The way he said it, like freedom was a gift he could only give, never receive.
I wanted to ask more. Wanted to peel back every layer of this man until I understood how someone who radiated danger could also radiate such profound … protection.
But I had other questions that needed answers first. Questions that had haunted me all weekend.
Now or never, I decided. Plus, maybe talking about something more serious would stop my mouth from drooling over his muscles.
“So”—I kept my eyes on my work—“I talked to Dr. Mercer last week. She told me about Doyle.” I inspected the bandage on his arm. “About what really happened that first day.”
Silence.
“Is it true?” I finally looked up, meeting his gaze. “Did you beat a man half to death because he threatened me? Before you’d even met me?”
Knox’s jaw tightened. One hand came up to rub the buzzed hair on the side of his head.
“Yes.”
The single word screeched like a record scratch. But at the same time, it dawned on me that he hadn’t hesitated to tell me the truth this time. Over the last few weeks, our relationship had grown from him dismissing my question to answering it.
“Why did you do it?” My voice cracked, and I hated it. “It would be hard enough for me to understand if it happened today, when, by now, we’ve had weeks of conversations.”
Knox studied me intently. The air in the exam room grew charged, buzzing with something forbidden. Something that ignored every professional boundary I’d ever drawn.
The smart thing to do would be to accept that I’d never have answers. Let this go. Move on.
But I couldn’t.
“You’re not used to someone sticking up for you,” Knox realized.
His arrow landed directly on the bull’s-eye. And it bothered me more than I wanted to admit that deep down, that truth chipped away at the fragile edges of my self-worth.
Because I wanted to believe I was stronger than that. I had survived my childhood. I had survived my parents. I had survived Silas. None of what happened to me had any bearing on my value as a person.
On the good days, that truth was easy to hold.
On the bad days, I wondered if something about me was fundamentally unlovable.
I mean, what kind of person has not one but two parents who turn their backs on them?
I wasn’t an easy child. Well, I was at first. But by high school, the resentment had reached critical mass.
Take teenage hormones, add years of watching your parents choose vodka bottles over electricity bills, and you get a teenager that could land in record books.
I’d had it with them. I knew addiction was a disease.
I knew they needed help. But I never saw them try.
Looking back, maybe they were too far down the rabbit hole to see clearly.
But back then, all I could see was that they chose their addiction over me in every possible way.
Stability. Love. Safety. Even their basic responsibilities of keeping a roof over my head and food in my stomach became casualties.
The good days were the angry days. Because the bad days were the ones spent crying myself to sleep, wishing just one of them would love me enough to put me first.
That used to be my biggest fantasy. I’d wake up and find my mom in the living room with her head in her hands.
She’d have been crying, and I’d see that something had finally clicked.
She’d rush over and hug me and sob and say she was so sorry for everything.
She’d promise to get help. She’d say I was her number one priority from now on.
And wrapped in that hug, all the toxins that had poisoned my soul would finally release.
I’d take her by the hand and drive her to rehab.
I’d be the one to pick her up when she got out.
We’d have dinner together every night. I’d tell her about my day, and she’d care.
She’d listen. She’d ask questions. She’d love me.
Then reality would snap that fantasy when I’d wake up and find her passed out somewhere in the house. And the next time I saw her conscious, she’d have a bottle in her hand. That anchor would drop straight to my stomach.
The point was, my parents would never have gotten into a fight to protect me.
And I couldn’t for the life of me understand why Knox would.
“I need you to tell me why,” I said. “Even if you think it’ll scare me. If you cared enough about me to get into a fight to protect me, care enough about me to understand that I need to know.”