Page 8 of Zorro

Then he surged forward, barreling into Zorro, grabbing him up into a fierce hug. Words tumbled from his mouth in rapid Tagalog, gratitude pouring from every syllable. Everly caught it all. His thanks was effusive. Breathless. Zorro winced a few times under the weight of the embrace but hugged him back, nodding. A nurse finally stepped between them with an update, her tone brisk but kind. The father’s face lit up, his joy radiant and unfiltered as he turned his attention to the baby. He reached out with trembling fingers, touched the newborn’s hand, and the boy, impossibly small, tightened his tiny fist tight around one of them.

Zorro watched the moment unfold, and something shifted in his face. In the way his eyes softened. In the way his jaw flexed, like he was holding something back, not pain this time, but something deeper. Something private. Wonder. Relief. A breath caught in her throat, his expression stuck between awe and heartbreak.

Was this the part that undid him? Not the danger, not the blood, not the endless weight of battlefield medicine, but this quiet, impossible aftermath? A child alive. A father weeping. Life won back from the edge.

Zorro stood there, watching, as if trying to memorize the shape of it. As if this were the reason he endured everything else.

A knot formed in her throat without warning. Her vision shimmered.

She blinked fast, hard. It was just fatigue. She was exhausted. That’s all. She hadn't slept in…God, she didn’t even know how long. Of course her body would start betraying her. That stinging behind her eyes wasn’t emotion. It couldn’t be.

No way in hell was she moved by the type of man who had been responsible for her husband’s death.

That would be reckless. Dangerous.

Stupid.

She swallowed against the ache anyway and turned, muttering to herself. Anything to get her eyes off his face. Off that newborn. Off that moment that felt too unguarded for a woman who had sworn never to feel this kind of thing again.

He waited until the two of them disappeared around the corner, then he pressed his hand against the wall and closed his eyes, and in that quiet beat, the weight of everything he carried etched itself across the hard lines of his face. It wasn’t just fatigue. It was the kind of bone-deep weariness that sleep couldn’t fix. Pain radiated beneath the surface, drawn tight around his mouth, set deep in the furrow between his brows. His breathing slowed, almost like he was trying to outrun it, or maybe contain it, fold it up neat and small the way men like him always did. The way Rob always had.

Her deceased husband, Dr. Robert Quinn, the brilliant, composed, clinical-to-the-bone trauma surgeon, would never be caught like this. Not with emotion flickering anywhere near his face. That shook her up more than she wanted to admit. But she shoved it aside, buried it like the raw, dangerous madness that made her lean down and kiss Zorro when he was barely conscious. The thought of kissing him when he was aware, when he could actually respond, scared her down to her bones. But the draw of him was irresistible. He wasn't just in her dreams; he was in her blood. She reinforced her armor, hoping it hadn’t been built on sand.

He didn’t float above pain like it couldn’t touch him. He let it in. He just didn’t let it win.

Everly saw it. She saw all of it:

The shadows in the corners of his eyes. The wince he tried to hide when he shifted his weight. The tension in his shoulders that hadn’t let go since the moment she’d found him, cradling a child like the world hadn’t already asked too much of him.

It clutched at her, fierce and unwelcome, this ache she couldn’t name. She told herself it was deep bone-weary exhaustion. It had to be, even when it pressed under her ribs like something sharp, something unfinished. She didn’t want to feel it, but she couldn’t seem to let it go.

Then it all shifted as two nurses came around the bend in the hall.

He slouched against the wall like he was waiting for a latte instead of bleeding through his shirt. “Ladies,” he said, voice light and disarming. “Did someone call for a tall drink of water with a side of minor blood loss?” The younger nurse giggled. The older one rolled her eyes but smiled anyway as they passed. He was nothing short of outrageous.

The two men might be different when it came to pain management, but charm ruled them both. She’d fallen for that once. She wasn’t going to make the same mistake again. Not when she already knew what it cost to believe she was wanted, only to learn she had been merely…convenient.

Yet when he tried to mask that wince, her patience ended. “Zorro.”

He looked up. Grinned. That goddamned grin. Crooked, unrepentant, pure trouble wrapped in charm and shadow. It hit her like always, sharp, sudden, and far too deep.

He would never know what it did to her. How it loosened something she’d bolted shut. How it made her furious with herself for noticing. For feeling. For remembering the weight of his body in that hospital bed, the rasp of his breath, the way her lips had brushed his in a moment of reckless need she could never take back.

No. He didn’t know, and he couldn’t. His grin was dangerous, and she’d had enough danger to last a lifetime.

“Doc.” Her name wasn’t in the word, but somehow, she heard it anyway. There was a rough affection in his voice, quiet, low, threaded with the kind of warmth that slipped past defenses before she could catch it. It landed deeper than it should have. That, too, she blamed on exhaustion.

“Get in here, now. You’re bleeding.”

He glanced down like he had to check. “Scrape. I’ve had worse shaving.”

She rolled her eyes and crossed to him.

“You pulling rank, Doc? I’ve got this.”

“You can barely see straight, and it’ll piss you off if you give yourself a ragged scar.”

He had no idea that she witnessed his exhaustion and wanted to kick herself for not throwing it in his face. It was the baby…the way he held it. She couldn’t lash out at him like that, not after what she’d seen.

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