Page 45 of Zorro

“I’m going to be tied up,” she said, low.

They both knew the truth. He knew better than to ask. They weren’t just two people in a hotel. They worked together, and she didn’t strike him as someone who did messy. But his training, his warrior instincts never went on vacation.

Watching the edges of her world satisfied a hunger in him he barely dared to name.

Though neither of them said it, they both knew he was way more than one of her boys.

The hallway outside her room was quiet, but his pulse wasn’t.

Zorro stood with his hand against the smooth veneer of her door, head bowed like he was praying to it. He wasn’t even sure what he expected anymore. A sound. A movement. A word. Anything.

But the silence had been unbroken for almost two days.

No replies. No footsteps.

No Everly.

He’d knocked the night before. The night before that. Softly. Respectfully. Then, with increasing desperation, he’d stood there, fists balled at his sides, willing her to open it. Willing her to let him in. But there’d been no response, no flicker of light beneath the door, just a void that stretched wider every time he reached for her.

He leaned forward, resting his forehead against the door.

“Talk to me,” he whispered, knowing she couldn’t hear him. “Say something, Doc. Yell at me. Fight with me. Just don’t shut me out like this.”

The door stayed cold beneath his skin.

He fished out his phone, thumb hovering over the messages he’d sent. Unread. All of them. Each one rawer than the last. He didn’t know what scared him more—that she was hurting in silence or that she didn’t want him to be part of the pain.

He typed anyway.

Talk to me. I’m going nuts. Let me help with whatever you’re going through.

The dots didn’t come.

He waited.

A minute. Two.

Then the screen lit.

You can’t fix this. No one can. I need time. Space. Please just leave me alone.

He read it once.

Then again.

The words hit so hard his breath held, then released in a painful rasp. Not because she was wrong. But because she believed it. That was the part that gutted him.

Time. Space. Alone.

He stared at those syllables like they’d been dipped in poison. He knew exactly what it felt like to believe that. To think that if he just pulled away, pulled inward, the ache would dull. That if he isolated the wound, it wouldn’t bleed so loudly. But he also knew that was the lie. That was his lie. The one that had almost broken him more than once. The one that whispered, You’re the only one who can carry this.

He tapped back.

Alone? When has anything ever been solved by being alone? Let me back in, querida.

Still nothing.

His heart thudded. Heavy. Miserable.

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