Chapter 6

Olivia POV

The horn didn't stop, it blared louder and closer and in an instant  I moved, I didn't think. I just moved, grabbing the boy around the middle and throwing us both toward the curb with everything I had left in my body. My heel caught on the edge of the sidewalk and I went down hard, twisting at the last second so my shoulder took the impact instead of him.

Then he was gone. Ripped clean out of my arms.

For one terrible half-second I thought the truck had taken him, and something in my chest tore open before I even had time to scream.

A hand closed around my wrist at the same moment and hauled me backward so fast my feet left the ground. The truck roared past close enough that the wind of it dragged across my face like a slap, hot with exhaust and rubber and the driver's furious, useless honking, already three seconds too late to matter.

I hit the pavement on my hands and knees. Pain bloomed hot and sharp across both palms.

For a second, all I could hear was my own heartbeat slamming in my ears.

"Are you hurt?"

I looked up. It was him. The man from the club, the one who'd driven me home in a car that cost more than my entire apartment building, except now I knew exactly who he was because his name was etched in six-foot brushed steel letters on the building behind us.

Roman Callahan.

He was crouched over the boy a few feet away, one arm locked around him so tight I wondered if it hurt, his face gone the color of old ash.

"Is he okay?" I asked, my voice cracking. I hadn't even gotten his name. I hadn't had time.

Roman didn't answer me. He was running his hands frantically over the boy's arms, his legs, his head, checking for injuries with the kind of desperate thoroughness that only comes from genuine terror.

"Hey. Hey, look at me." His voice broke clean in half. "Ethan. Ethan, look at me, please."

Ethan.

The boy didn't look at him. He didn't make a single sound. He just stood there, small and rigid, staring at nothing, his fingers twisted so tightly into his father's shirt that his knuckles had gone white.

Roman scooped him up like he weighed nothing at all and turned back toward the building without a word.

"Wait—" I scrambled up, my palms screaming in protest. "Shouldn't someone check him for a concussion, or—"

He kept walking.

I stood there in the middle of the sidewalk, blood beading along the scraped skin of my hands, and watched the man whose son I had just thrown myself in front of a truck for carry him away like I'd never existed.

"Are you serious right now?" I said, to absolutely no one.

I grabbed my bag from where I'd dropped it and marched after him, indignation doing a much better job of getting my legs moving than logic would have. The receptionist who'd rejected me an hour earlier didn't even try to stop me this time. She just stared, eyes huge, as I stormed straight past her desk.

I found them in a side office off the lobby, all frosted glass and hushed carpet. A woman in scrubs was crouched in front of Ethan, shining a penlight into his eyes while he sat perfectly still on the exam table, staring at a spot on the wall like it held the answers to something.

"No signs of a concussion," the woman said. "But I'd still recommend a full evaluation, just to be thorough."

"Do it," Roman said. "Today."

I hovered in the doorway, suddenly unsure why I was even still there. Then Roman turned and saw me, and his expression did something I wasn't prepared for. It closed. Completely. Like a door slamming shut on a room I'd only just been let into.

"You can go now," he said.

I blinked. "Excuse me?"

"Your business here is finished."

Something hot climbed straight up my throat. "My business? I don't have a job here, remember? I got disqualified for being nine minutes late to an interview nobody bothered to reschedule."

"Then there's nothing keeping you." He said it flatly, like he was reading off a memo.

I stared at him, waiting for something. A thank you. An acknowledgment that his son was alive right now because I hadn't hesitated. Anything.

"Your son almost got hit by a truck," I said slowly, "and I am the entire reason that didn't happen. And this is what I get?"

His jaw ticked. His eyes flicked, just briefly, toward Ethan, who was watching the exchange with an intensity that made my stomach hurt, and whatever softness had almost been visible on Roman's face a second ago vanished completely.

"I need to focus on my son," he said. "Please see yourself out."

Heat flooded my face. I turned around and walked before he could see exactly how much that landed, my scraped palms curling into fists so tight I could feel my own pulse in them.

I made it as far as the elevator bank before a man in a sharply tailored gray suit caught up to me, slightly out of breath, one hand raised like he was trying to stop traffic.

"Miss Carter. Wait, please."

I turned. "How do you know my name?"

"Adrian. I'm Mr. Callahan's assistant." He glanced back over his shoulder toward the office, then dropped his voice like the walls might be listening. "What you did outside — that was genuinely, incredibly brave."

"Tell your boss that. He seems to have missed it."

"He's not usually like this." Adrian said it carefully, like a man choosing which truths were safe to hand over. Then, abruptly, "Were you here for the nanny interview this morning?"

My stomach dropped straight through the floor. "Yes. Why does that matter?"

His expression shifted into something between disbelief and urgency, and he was already pulling his phone from his pocket before he finished his sentence. "Wait right here. Please. Give me five minutes. Maybe ten."

"Adrian—"

But he was already walking briskly back down the hall, phone pressed to his ear, voice dropping into something too low for me to catch.

I stood there by the elevators with my scraped-up hands and my racing pulse, torn between storming out of the building entirely and the small, stubborn hope that refused to let my feet move.

Five minutes passed. Then closer to fifteen.

When Adrian finally reappeared, Roman was walking half a step behind him, and the look on his face told me absolutely nothing about what was coming next.

"You're the nanny candidate," Roman said. It wasn't phrased as a question.

"I was. Before I got disqualified for being late."

"Adrian tells me you have experience with children who've experienced trauma."

I hesitated for exactly one second too long. That wasn't true. I had zero formal experience with anything except spreadsheets and a finance degree I couldn't currently use to buy a sandwich. But I thought about the motel room waiting for me three nights from running out, my mother's hospital bill, Emma's tuition, and I found the lie came easier than I expected.

"I do," I said.

Roman studied me the way you'd study a stranger's résumé for a job you already regretted posting. Behind him, through the open door, I could see Ethan still sitting on the exam table, sketchbook — where had that even come from — clutched tight against his chest, watching the two of us with an unreadable stillness that made him seem years older than seven.

"One week," Roman said finally. "A trial. If it doesn't work, you're gone immediately. No discussion, no second chances."

"And if it does work?"

"Don't get ahead of yourself, Miss Carter."

I should have said no. I should have walked straight out of that building and away from a man who couldn't manage two words of gratitude even after I'd nearly become roadkill on his behalf.

But then I looked past him, at the boy still sitting so carefully still on that exam table, at the way his knuckles had gone white around the edge of his sketchbook, and something in my chest twisted hard enough to hurt.

"Fine," I said. "One week."

Something flickered behind Roman's eyes, quick and unreadable, like he hadn't actually expected me to agree.

"Adrian will send the details," he said, and turned to walk away.

"Wait." The word came out before I'd decided to say it.

He stopped, but didn't turn around.

"You still haven't said thank you."

His shoulders went rigid beneath his suit jacket. For one full second, I thought he might actually do it.

Instead, he walked away without another word, and I stood there in the middle of that gleaming lobby wondering exactly what I had just signed myself up for.