7. Mireya
CHAPTER SEVEN
MIREYA
Riven left for his run at exactly five-fifteen in the morning.
I knew this because I had been awake every single time.
I told myself it was the new environment.
The unfamiliar sounds of a building this high up, the particular quality of silence that existed forty floors above the city.
That was why I was always somehow already awake when I heard his door open.
That was why I had started drifting toward the kitchen right around five-ten without quite deciding to.
It had nothing to do with him.
He never noticed me there. Or if he did, he said nothing, which amounted to the same thing.
He would come down the hall in dark training shorts and a fitted shirt that did very little to hide the fact that cardiac surgery was apparently not the only thing he was disciplined about.
He moved quietly for someone his size. Focused already, jaw set, like he had been solving something in his sleep and was continuing the thought mid-stride.
He would pause at the kitchen counter, drink a full glass of water in silence, check his watch once, and leave.
Every morning for four mornings I had stood at the kitchen doorway with my coffee and watched this happen and told myself I was simply an early riser who happened to be thirsty.
The doors would close behind him and the penthouse would go quiet again.
And then I would stand there for a moment longer than necessary before reminding myself I had things to do.
The returning was its own problem entirely.
Fifty minutes later, give or take, I would hear the elevator.
And then he would walk back through the door and every coherent thought I had would briefly evacuate the premises.
His shirt would be damp and clinging, dark hair pushed back from his forehead, a flush across his cheekbones that was the closest thing to undone I had ever seen on him.
He moved differently after a run. Looser.
Less armored. Like whatever wall he maintained for the rest of the world hadn't quite reassembled itself yet.
Last Tuesday he had pulled his shirt off in the kitchen doorway without seeming to register I was standing there.
I had found something very interesting to look at on the opposite wall for approximately thirty seconds.
He had the kind of build that made complete sense once you understood he spent his days holding human hearts steady with his bare hands. Controlled. Precise.
I was a medical professional. I was capable of observing a human body without it being a thing.
It was a thing.
I had ninety minutes until Emma woke around seven, which was plenty of time to finish my coffee and get my entire self together before he came back through that door.
I topped up my mug and stayed exactly where I was.
I padded into the kitchen barefoot, still wearing pajama shorts and an oversized t-shirt, my hair messy from sleep. The early light made the space feel calmer and less polished.
The coffee machine waited on the counter like a reward for surviving the night. I figured it out through stubborn trial and error by the second day. It made a few loud noises and steam rose into the air.
I leaned against the counter and watched the city stretch toward the day.
My phone buzzed softly on the counter. I glanced down–habit than necessary. A couple of hospital notifications. Shift coverage requests.
“You’re up early.”
I jumped violently, nearly dropping my mug. My heart slammed against my ribs as I spun around.
Emma stood in the doorway wearing an oversized shirt that read "I'm not arguing, I'm just explaining why I'm right" in bold letters. Her dark hair was piled on top of her head in a chaotic knot.
“I thought you slept until seven,” I said, pressing my hand to my racing chest.
"Usually." She climbed onto a bar stool and swung her feet like a much younger child. "But I smelled coffee. Plus I wanted to catch you alone before Riven gets back from his run."
My fingers tightened around the mug. “Why would you want that?”
“Because Riven is always gone on his runs in the mornings and I have questions.” She rested her chin in both hands and raised her eyebrows. “Do you like my brother?”
The mug slipped a little in my fingers. “What?”
“It’s a simple question. Do you think my brother is attractive?”
"Emma, I don't think that's—"
"I've noticed the way you look at him sometimes," she continued relentlessly. "And more importantly, the way he looks at you. It's painfully obvious to anyone with functional eyesight."
Heat rushed up my neck and warmed my ears. “He does not look at me in any particular way.”
“He absolutely does,” she said without hesitation. “He has that intense stare going on. Very dramatic and slightly ridiculous.”
"Your brother is my employer," I said firmly, pouring coffee with unnecessary concentration. "This is a professional arrangement. That's all."
I started making fresh-squeezed orange juice just to give my hands something productive to do.
Emma laughed. “Oh my God, you actually believe that.”
“Because it’s true.”
“It’s not,” she said, accepting the glass I slid across the counter. “He’s been acting strange since you got here.”
She took a deliberate sip.
"Well, maybe he's just adjusting to having someone new in the apartment," I suggested weakly.
"He checked his reflection in mirrors multiple times a day and asked me if his hair looked okay." She leaned forward conspiratorially. "Riven never asks about his hair. The man could show up to surgery with a bedhead and not notice."
"Maybe he just felt like looking presentable," I offered.
“For who? Me?” She took another sip.
"Riven took me in because you needed qualified post-operative monitoring. And, coincidentally, because I was homeless. That’s all.”
“Is it though?” she asked. Emma tilted her head, studying me with unnerving perception. “Because the air gets tense whenever you’re both in the same room. And it’s not awkward tense. It’s definitely romance-movie tense.” She wriggled her eyebrows suggestively.
"I don't know what you're talking about," I said.
"Your face is red."
"It's warm in here."
"It's sixty-eight degrees. Riven keeps it sixty-eight degrees always. He's very particular about it." She propped her chin on her hand. "Your face is red because I mentioned him and you started thinking about him and now you don't know where to look."
I looked at my coffee mug.
"See," Emma said triumphantly.
The worst part was that she wasn't wrong.
The moment she had said his name something had shifted in my chest, warm and inconvenient, and now I was thinking about the way he had looked coming back from his run this morning.
Flushed and loose and briefly, dangerously human.
The way his eyes had found mine across the kitchen before he remembered to put the wall back up.
I pressed my cool mug against my cheek casually. Just because it was warm in here.
"You both do this thing," Emma continued, merciless, "where you're very carefully not looking at each other and somehow that's louder than if you just looked."
"Emma."
"I'm just saying. It's a lot of effort for two people who supposedly feel nothing."
"Can we talk about something else please."
"Fine." She sighed with her whole body. "But I'm right."
She was completely right and that was the entire problem and I was not going to think about it for one more second.
"I need to check your vitals this afternoon," I said. "Blood pressure, heart rate, medication schedule."
Emma smiled into her juice like she had won something.
She had absolutely won something.
Emma brightened at once. “You’re really good at the nurse thing. You’re gentle and patient while you do it.”
“It's my job,” I said simply.
“You remind me of Riven, actually,” she said.
She set her glass down, her voice softening into something more serious.
“He saved my life when I got sick. Everyone else wanted to give up.
He never did. He kept pushing, kept researching, kept fighting for treatment options when other doctors said there weren't any.”
Her eyes grew distant, remembering. "He's the best person I know. But he keeps everyone at arm's length because he's terrified of losing them. But he cares deeply. More than anyone notices.”
She was speaking from gratitude, but it also sounded suspiciously like a sales pitch for her brother. "You're lucky to have each other," I said carefully.
“We are,” she said. “But he needs more than just me. Just putting that out there.”
“Noted,” I said, my voice carefully neutral.
“Good.” She hopped off the stool. “I'm going back to bed for another hour. Thank you for the juice.”
The afternoon moved along. I checked Emma's vitals around two o'clock like clockwork, wrapping the blood pressure cuff around her upper arm with practiced efficiency. The reading came back better than the last one, and it made me genuinely relieved.
"You're doing great," I said, removing the cuff and recording the data in my phone.
“I take my meds religiously,” she said proudly. "Haven't missed a single one.”
“Good girl.” I flashed a smile. “Your cardiologist will be pleased.”
Evening arrived and dinner came in brown bags filled with Thai food that Riven ordered. We sat at the kitchen island with Emma between us. She ate and talked about a book she was reading and asked questions about the characters with more excitement than either of us could match.
I lifted my chopsticks and tried focusing on noodles, but my attention kept drifting sideways.
To Riven's hands.
His hands were steady and sure. Those were the same hands that operated on failing hearts without hesitation. I watched the muscles in his forearms flex as he lifted food to his mouth. He'd rolled his sleeves up to his elbows, exposing strong forearms that drew the eye without any effort at all.
My decidedly non-clinical brain had other observations.