Page 67 of The Vigilant

“Jon’s daughter.”

My throat tightened. I couldn’t recall a time when I’d met so many people who knew my father. It was getting harder and harder to think of the man as a ghost when so many people kept bringing him back to life.

“Yeah.”

“Rorik Nilsen.” He scrubbed his hands with sanitizer and then extended one in my direction. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

“Did you serve with my father?” I asked as I shook it.

“No, I didn’t have the honor.” His mouth twitched like he wanted to smile, but the fuse was shorted. “But we all owe him for saving Tynan’s life.”

My inhale felt like shards of glass down my throat.

“I gave him something for the pain, so he’s going to be out for a little while if you want?—”

“No, I’m fine.” I walked around him to the sink, wetting a dish towel and bringing it back to the gurney.

I stopped short, stunned again by how deathlike Tynan appeared. Even hooked up to all the machines that beeped with life, it felt like a false sense of hope. A fool’s proof of life.

At the slight rise of Tynan’s chest, the air released from mine.

I went back to his side and gently placed the wet cloth to his chest. Careful to avoid the area directly around the bandaged wound, I wiped away where blood had stained his skin.

“You should go get something to eat or take a minute while I clean up?—”

“I’m fine,” I said a little sharper this time, looking up over Tynan’s sedated body to glare at Rorik.

His jaw twitched. “You may be fine, but you’re covered in blood.”

My head jerked down, and I saw the front of me was a canvas of Tynan’s blood. My back from having him resting on me during the ride. My front from moving him and then holding his jacket.

Shit.

I swallowed over the lump in my throat. “Right.”

“You can come back as soon as you’re done…” he suggested as though I needed to hear the words aloud to believe them.

Slowly, I pulled the cloth back, unable to take my eyes from his face. The urge to both kiss him and knife him again swept through me like two winds fighting to direct the storm that brewed inside me.

“It’s my fault he’s here,” I said, not really to him in particular but so that someone knew of my guilt.

“So, you stabbed him?”

My eyes narrowed to slits on the doctor. “He was protecting me.”

Rorik grunted. “Seems like it was his own choice then.”

“A stupid one,” I countered. “It was my fight.”

I went back to the sink to wring out the towel. For a minute, it seemed like the doctor had no counter for what I’d said. But then I heard his low, stony voice from over my shoulder.

“When you’ve got people who care about you, you’re never fighting alone.”

I ducked my head, acid chewing its way into my throat.

Tynan didn’t care about me. He cared about my father. He cared about duty. He cared about some misguided sense of responsibility and protecting me.

But caring about me…

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