Chapter 36
LILA
I haven't left Dane's side since they wheeled him out of surgery, except when the nurses kicked me out to check on him. Seven hours in the OR and three blood transfusions later, he's still here. Barely.
The steady beep of his heart monitor is a reassuring sound I welcome.
I study his face, slack with medication, stripped of that intensity that both terrifies and thrills me.
His stubble's grown in patchy where they shaved parts for the stitches along his jawline where a bullet grazed him.
The bruising around his eyes makes him look like he's wearing smudged eyeshadow.
"You look like shit, Wolfe," I whisper, squeezing his hand. No response. The doctors say that's normal.
Normal. As if anything about this situation is normal.
I haven't slept more than twenty minutes at a stretch since it happened. Every time I close my eyes, I see Brian's body on that conference room floor, blood pooling around my feet. I feel the pen in my hand, the resistance as it pushed through skin and muscle.
The detective who took my statement—Martinez—said it sounded like self-defense, cut and dry. But I know she'll be back for more questions, especially when her ears and pockets get filled by Claire Langford.
I rub my eyes, trying to push away the paranoia. That's when Brian's words slither back into my mind: "Your precious Dane has been watching you."
Bullshit. Has to be. Just another manipulation from a psychopath, right? But what if it's not? I haven't even been back to my place. Maybe I'm avoiding it.
I look at Dane's hand in mine, his knuckles still scraped from the fight. This man took three bullets for me. Killed three men to keep me safe. Would he also invade my privacy? Watch me without my knowledge?
"What am I supposed to do with you?" I whisper, throat tight. "If you've been lying to me this whole time..."
The heart monitor beeps steadily, offering no answers.
I reach for my cold coffee cup, grimacing at the bitter taste. Thirty-six hours in this hospital chair, and I'm still no closer to knowing what's real. All I know is I'm not ready to walk away, not until I hear the truth from him.
"Wake up, Dane," I murmur. "I need you to be fine, and then tell me who you really are."
DANE
I surface from darkness by degrees. Floating in a void, then swimming up through gray fog toward consciousness. Pain greets me like an old friend, sharp, intimate, familiar. Hospitals have a smell you never forget. Antiseptic over blood. Bleach over death.
I'm alive. That's the first surprise.
Something warm presses against my right arm. My eyelids weigh a thousand pounds, but I force them open, blinking against harsh fluorescent lighting. The world's blurry at first: white ceiling, beeping machines, tubes running from my arm.
Then Lila comes into focus, and everything else fades to background noise.
She's asleep, half-collapsed against my bed, auburn hair spilled across the white sheets. Dark circles under her eyes tell me she's been here awhile. Her hand loosely clutches mine even in sleep.
The sight of her hits harder than the bullets did.
I flex my left hand, finding it wrapped in a sling, shoulder throbbing in dull waves beneath bandages. Right hand seems operational though. I lift it slowly, muscles protesting after disuse, and brush my fingertips across her cheek.
Soft. Warm.
Alive.
"You're so strong," I whisper, voice a sandpaper rasp.
She fought Langford, didn't buckle. Stood her ground and won. Drove a fucking pen into his neck while I was so many steps behind.
Her eyelashes flutter against my touch. I should pull back, let her sleep, but I'm selfish. I need to see those green eyes, need confirmation that we both made it through.
I trace the line of her cheek with my thumb, drinking in the sight of her. When she stirs, her eyes flutter open, confusion giving way to shock.
"Dane?" Her voice cracks. "Oh my God, you're awake."
She sits bolt upright, immediately alert. Relief washes across her features, but something else lurks behind it, something guarded, distant. Like she's built a wall while I was under.
"Hey." The words scrape out of my throat. "Miss me?"
Her face does a complicated dance between joy and something darker. She reaches for the water cup, holds the straw to my lips. I drink, wondering what's changed behind her beautiful gaze.
"Three days," she says, answering the question I didn't ask. "You've been out for three days. They weren't sure..." She swallows hard. "One bullets in your shoulder, your thigh, your side. You lost a lot of blood."
"Claire?" I have to know what happened.
"Gone. The police thinks she fled the country." Lila's voice is clinical, detached. "They found Sarah Keller's body in a cold room on the same floor. And six others. They kept them as some sort of trophies."
"Shit. That's messed up."
I process this with the cold calculation my training installed. Seven dead. Claire in the wind. The math doesn't balance.
"You okay?" I ask, though I can see the answer. She's not.
"I killed someone, Dane." Her voice is flat. "I stuck a pen in his throat and watched him die."
The distance makes sense now. Some people, when they first kill, it breaks something fundamental. Reshapes their understanding of what they're capable of. I've seen it happen to stronger people than me.
"You did what you had to do," I say, though I know platitudes don't help. Death leaves fingerprints on your soul that no amount of justification can wash away.
"I know." Her eyes meet mine, but they're somewhere far away. "The funny thing is, I don't feel guilty. I feel... nothing. Is that normal?"
I want to tell her it'll come later—the nightmares, the replays, the crushing weight—but maybe she'll be one of the lucky ones. Maybe she won't carry it like I do.
"There's no normal," I say instead. "Just before and after."
Lila nods, her gaze dropping to where our hands meet on the hospital sheet. Something changes in her posture, a subtle withdrawal that speaks volumes. She pulls her hands away.
"It's actually something else," she says quietly. "Something different that keeps circling in my head."
My chest tightens. The monitor beside me betrays my heart rate with a quickened beep. There's only one thing that would make her look at me like that, like she's seeing me for the first time and doesn't recognize what she's found.
"Brian told me something before I..." She swallows. "Before I killed him."
The moment hangs between us, crystalline and sharp-edged. I could lie. Could deny everything. But we're past that now—past the point where pretty fictions can paper over ugly truths.
"He said you had cameras in my apartment." Her eyes meet mine, searching. "That you've been watching me. Stalking me from the start."
The silence that follows feels like its own entity, heavy and accusatory. My throat dries up, words deserting me when I need them most. What the fuck do you say when your darkest impulses are dragged into the light?
"Is it true?" she whispers.
I've faced death without flinching, but her question terrifies me. The irony isn't lost on me. I survived being shot three times only to die here, in this antiseptic room, under the weight of her gaze.
"Yes." The word falls from my lips like a stone. "It's true."
Her face doesn't crumple like I expected. Instead, she goes completely still, like prey that's just spotted a predator but hasn't decided whether to run yet.
"Why?" The simplicity of the question makes it impossible to dodge.
"Because I'm broken," I say, brutal honesty the only currency I have left. "Because watching you felt like breathing when I'd been drowning for so long. Because I wanted to protect you."
I don't say: Because I'm my father's son after all. Because the darkness was always there, waiting for the right moment to surface.
"From the moment I saw you at the bar, I recognized something." I swallow, my throat desert-dry. "The sadness in your eyes. Like you were carrying something heavy, something that hollowed you out the same way I've been hollowed. I wanted to know you. Really know you."
The monitor betrays my heartbeat again, racing as I expose the twisted logic that seemed so reasonable in the dark.
"I installed them that night after you rejected me. Told myself I was protecting you." A bitter laugh escapes me. "Such bullshit, right? The sad thing is I halfway believed it."
Her face remains impossibly still, like she's looking at a stranger wearing my skin.
"I was going to take them down after our first night together. I swear to God, Lila." The desperation in my voice disgusts me. "But then everything with Langford..."
She turns away, and Christ, the disappointment in her eyes cuts deeper than I thought possible. More sadness there now than when we first met, and I put it there. Another broken thing I've broken further.
"You know what the worst part is?" she whispers. "I actually believe you. That you think that makes it better somehow."
The truth is a loaded gun, and I've finally turned it on myself. "You're right. It doesn't."
Silence stretches between us, thick with all the things we can't take back.
"I'm not who you thought I was," I finally say. "I'm not the hero who saves the girl. I'm the monster who watches from the shadows. I've spent my whole life running from what my father was, only to become something just as fucked up in my own way."
She stands slowly, gathering her jacket. "I need time."
"I know." I don't beg her to stay. Don't have the right.
At the door, she pauses. "Did you mean it? What you said about me being the first light that didn’t blind you?"
"Every word," I answer, my voice barely audible. "That's the cruelest joke of all."