LOGINRavenRoman wheels me slowly between the rows of incubators, past machines humming low and steady, past other parents standing vigil beside glass boxes holding entire futures too small to hold themselves yet. My leg throbs dully under the bandage with every small jolt of the wheels, and my heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat, the two sensations tangled together until I can’t tell which one is making me breathless.“There.” Roman’s voice drops to barely above a whisper as we stop in front of one incubator near the end of the row. “There she is.”I look down, and my chest aches with a love so fierce it steals my breath.She’s so small.“Oh.” The sound escapes me before I can stop it, my bruised hand pressing carefully against the glass. “Oh, she’s…”“Perfect,” Roman finishes quietly, crouching down beside my chair so we’re both level with her. “She’s perfect.”Tears blur my vision almost instantly. “She’s really here. She’s really okay?”“She’s strong.” He re
RavenThere are voices before there’s anything else.Distant at first, blurred at the edges, like sound underwater, and I can’t make sense of any of it, just tone, just urgency, just the shape of a voice I know without being able to place why I know it.“…I think she’s waking up. Doctor, I think she’s waking up—”Light next, harsh and unwelcome, and I feel my eyelids fighting against it, heavy, resistant, my whole body feeling like it belongs to someone else entirely.“Raven.” The voice again, closer now, clearer. “Raven, can you hear me?”I force my eyes open.The room swims into focus slowly, shapes resolving into a ceiling, a light fixture, and then a face leaning over me, familiar in a way that cuts through the fog faster than anything else has.Roman.His face is drawn, exhausted, dark circles carved deep beneath his eyes, but the moment my gaze finds his, something in his expression breaks open entirely.“There you are.” His voice cracks on the words. “Thank God. Thank God.”I t
Roman “Marcus. Where is she.” He doesn’t need to ask who. “St. Augustine’s. Someone called it in, ambulance picked her up off the road and brought her there. I don’t have a room number yet.” “Get in the car.” The drive there is short, too short for the fury building in my chest to burn off even slightly, and by the time I walk through the front doors of St. Augustine’s I’ve already decided exactly what I’m going to do. The woman at the front desk looks up as I approach. “Can I help you?” “Vivienne Cole. What room.” “I’m sorry, sir, I can’t release patient information without knowing your relationship to her.” “A friend.” The lie comes out flat, cold. “I’ll need to verify that before I can—” I slam my palm down on the counter, hard enough that she flinches back in her chair. “I don’t have time for your protocol. Give me the ward. Now.” Her hands are shaking as she pulls up the file. “Fourth floor. Room 412.” I’m already walking before she finishes the sentence.
RomanMy phone rings from the passenger seat, and I glance at the screen, only half paying attention to the road.Anaya.She came the moment I called, staying behind to watch Raven while I dealt with Vivienne. I only got off the phone with one of the nurses a few minutes ago. Seeing Anaya’s name now makes something cold settle in my stomach.I answer immediately.“How bad is it?”“Roman, you need to come back.” Her voice is trembling, words spilling over each other. “Something’s wrong. They said Raven’s numbers are dropping, and she needs a blood transfusion right now. They tested me to see if I was a match, but… I’m not. They said my blood is incompatible.”For a second, everything inside me goes still.“I’m on my way.”I end the call and drive straight back to the hospital, every red light, every speed limit, every car in my way becoming meaningless. My hands grip the wheel so hard my knuckles ache, one thought pounding through my head over and over.Please don’t let me be too late.
RomanThe hospital feels different walking back into it, quieter somehow, though nothing has actually changed except me.They’ve moved Raven to a private ward, and the doctor meets me outside the door with an expression I’ve learned to read as bad news trying to sound careful.“She’s stable,” he says. “But she’s in a coma.”The word lands somewhere I don’t have room for it. “For how long?”“We can’t say for certain. It could be days. Weeks. In some cases it stretches into months, occasionally longer.” He pauses. “All we can do right now is monitor her and wait.”I don’t remember him leaving.I’m sitting beside her bed a moment later, her hand small and still in mine, machines marking out the rhythm of her heart in slow, patient beeps. I press her knuckles to my lips.“Nothing will ever touch you again,” I tell her quietly. “I swear it on my life. Whatever it takes to bring you back to me, I’ll do it. However long it takes, I’ll be right here.”I stay like that for what feels
RomanMy phone is already against my ear before I’ve fully pulled onto the road, Raven laid across the back seat, blood soaking dark into the leather beneath her.“I need a trauma team ready.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “Female, twenty-eight weeks pregnant, hit by a vehicle. Five minutes out.”“Sir, can you confirm her condition, is she conscious, is she breathing—”“Just have them ready.” I hang up before the voice on the other end can ask anything else, eyes flicking constantly to the mirror, checking the rise and fall of her chest.“Stay with me,” I say, to no one, to her, to whatever’s still listening. “You hear me? Stay with me.”Every light between the cemetery and the hospital gets run. My foot stays flat against the pedal, one hand braced back against the seat on every turn, trying to keep her from sliding.The staff are already outside when I stop the car, pulling the door open, lifting her onto a stretcher with careful, practiced hands. An oxygen mask goes over
RavenI pull out my phone.Her name is Vivienne Cole. I’d known the name long before Roman ever did, everyone knew Vivienne Cole. She was Miss America at twenty-two, she has the kind of beauty that didn’t seem real, the kind you stared at as a little girl and genuinely wondered if she was a differe
Roman I have been in rooms with presidents. I have negotiated deals that made grown men sweat through their suits. I have buried a woman I loved and kept my composure at her graveside because my daughter needed me to be steady and I was. I am not steady right now. I knew she was coming. I had
Raven In a few minutes, I’ll see Roman again after three years apart, and God help me, I might lose my mind just thinking about it. James drives smoothly and unhurriedly, as if there is no such thing as urgency in the world. I’d forgotten that about him. I’d forgotten a lot of things about Boston
RavenHis hand closed over my wrist and guided it gently away. Then his fingers were there instead, and the difference was immediate — the difference between trying to tickle yourself and someone else doing it. He found my clit with easy, unhurried pressure and I gasped so hard I almost choked on i







