Page 57 of Velvet Betrayal
And that scared the hell out of me.
“He’ll live,” Dr. Mehta said, glancing at me with what might have been a joke. “You did a good job cleaning it. I’ll check his pupils again in an hour. If he starts vomiting, call me or 911, whichever works.”
“Can I go home?” Kieran asked.
The doctor looked at Tristan.
“Yes,” Tristan said. “But you shouldn’t be alone.”
Tristan pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re both benched for forty-eight hours. I’ll keep the Crew busy.”
Kieran arched a brow. “What does that mean?”
“It means I order in a dozen dirty contracts and let them chase ghosts from Brockton to the Cape. If anyone inside 495 so much as breathes your name, I’ll know.”
“Not a lot of margin,” I said.
“The city never gives more,” Tristan replied.
Dr. Mehta scribbled notes in a real notebook. I wondered what he wrote: alley fight, recurring patient, spouse at bedside—recommend counseling.
Spouse. What a joke.
“I’d really like to go home,” Kieran said.
“As long as your wife can stay with you, you’re fine,” Dr. Mehta said.
Kieran flashed a bloody smile. “Great. She will. Won’t you, honey?”
I rolled my eyes, but the word hit different. Like after a day of watching him almost die, I was the only one left who knew he was alive. “I’ll stay,” I said. “Keep him out of trouble.”
Tristan snorted. “You’ll be the first.”
Ruby
Ididn’t give Kieran a choice about the car. He tried to brush off my help—something about pride, or dignity, or the Irish—but I’d seen enough blood for one night, and he was barely vertical. We staggered up the basement stairs, out into the dead gray city, and for a second, the cold air felt like a slap.
The city didn’t care that we’d survived. It never did.
I got him home. His place, not mine. I wasn’t about to drag a bruised, bleeding man through my own front door for the neighbors to see. Kieran, on the other hand, probably made a habit of it.
He crashed on the couch before I’d even finished locking up. Slumped sideways, one leg dangling, looking more like a battered animal than a man. The gauze on his temple was already slipping, the edge soaked through with something dark and ugly. I thought about fixing it. Didn’t.
For a while, I just watched him. There was something weirdly soft about his face when he slept—lashes sticky with dried blood, mouth refusing to settle, even in unconsciousness. I watched the rise and fall of his chest, the slow drag of his breath, and let the rest of the world dull down to two frequencies: the static in my own head, and the low, wounded rumble of Kieran’s snoring.
I wondered how many nights he’d done this—stumbled home alone, slept it off, woken up with a splitting headache and gone back out to get his ass kicked again. I didn’t like the idea of him alone and bleeding. I didn’t like the idea of him alone at all.
My chest ached. I rubbed at it, annoyed at my stubborn desire to take care of this walking disaster.
The city was quieter with every window locked and deadbolt thrown. I put the kettle on, sorted junk mail, stacked towels, wiped the counter twice for no reason. Anything to keep my hands busy. Every now and then, I’d tune in to the couch, just to make sure he was still breathing. My phone buzzed a couple times from the far end of the kitchen island, but it was only legal assistants, judges…not Rosie, not Julian, not Alek..
Everyone always needed something.
Kieran needed me more.
Kieran would wake up starving. I was, too. I wasn’t in the habit of cooking for men, but I poked around his fridge anyway. He’d once joked that the Callahans didn’t trust anything green unless it was cash, and the fridge proved his point by offering only two shrink-wrapped pizzas and a carton of orange juice that looked like a biohazard.
I tore the plastic off a pizza, shoved it into the oven, and stood there with my hands over the coils, letting the heat burn the edge off my nerves. The whole day had left a weird, crawling dread under my skin. Not fear for myself, exactly—just a sense that nothing was going to get easier.
