FINAL

Final

Nadia's POV

I didn't hear everything.

But I heard enough.

I set the last of my supplies down slowly and watched him end the call and turn toward me with that look — the one that had shifted somewhere between the beginning of the call and the end of it. Like I had changed categories without being consulted.

"What," I said.

Not a question. A demand.

Kane looked at me for a moment. Then he crossed back to the chair and sat, one hand pressing against the bandage briefly before dropping.

"There were people on that road tonight," he said. "They saw you."

I blinked. "Saw me do what? Help you? Yes. I did that. Openly. In the middle of a road."

"That's not the part that matters to them."

"Then what part—" I stopped. Something was assembling itself in my head and I didn't like the shape it was taking. "What exactly are you saying to me right now?"

"I'm saying you were seen. With me. Tonight." He held my gaze. "That makes you a problem for certain people."

I stared at him.

Then I laughed.

Not because it was funny — it was the furthest thing from funny — but because my brain genuinely did not have another immediate response to what he'd just said.

"A problem," I repeated.

"Yes."

"I'm a problem."

"To them. Yes."

I stood up. I couldn't sit anymore — my legs made the decision before my brain did and I was on my feet, both hands pressed flat against the top of my head, staring at my own ceiling.

"Okay," I said. "Okay, okay, okay—" I turned around. "I don't know you. I don't know your name — and before you say Man again I need you to understand that I am very close to the edge right now — I don't know what happened tonight, I don't know who those people are, I don't know anything except that you were bleeding and I stopped and helped you because that is what a decent human being does—"

"I know."

"Then why am I a problem?!"

He looked at me with that infuriating steadiness. "Because they don't know what you know. And people like that don't investigate before they act."

The sentence landed like something cold dropping into still water.

I heard it. All of it. The thing underneath it too.

"So what are you telling me," I said slowly. "Be specific. Very specific."

"Going back to your normal routine tonight isn't safe."

I pointed at the floor. "I am in my normal routine. I am in my apartment. I live here. This is my home that I pay for—"

"Alone. With no protection. And an address that isn't difficult to find."

"I have a door!"

"Nadia."

The way he said my name — and I hadn't even told him my name, which meant he'd read it somewhere, my bag, my kit, something — stopped me mid-breath.

I turned to face him fully.

"I have an exam," I said.

"I have class. I have a life that was running perfectly fine before I made the catastrophic decision to walk down Delvin Road tonight." My voice was climbing and I knew it was climbing and I couldn't stop it. "I am not involved in whatever this is. I don't want to be involved. I helped you, you're stable, you can call whoever you need to call and they can come and get you and I can go to bed—"

"You can't stay here alone tonight."

"Watch me!"

"Nadia—"

"No!" I held up a hand. "No. Wait. Wait, wait, wait." I took a breath. Two. Pressed my fingers to my mouth and thought carefully. "I am not leaving my apartment. Do you understand me? This is my space. My things are here. My notes are here. I have six days to my exam and I cannot—" I stopped again. "Who even are you? You won't tell me your name. You showed up bleeding on a road at almost eleven at night with a gunshot wound and a phone with one contact and now you're sitting in my chair telling me my life is in danger?" I stared at him. "Who are you?"

Kane looked at me for a long, unhurried moment.

"Someone you shouldn't have stopped for," he said quietly.

The apartment was very still.

I didn't look away. He didn't either.

And I understood, standing in my own living room in the apartment I paid for with my own money — I understood that tonight was not ending the way I'd planned.

The shower.

The rice.

The eight hours of sleep.

None of it was happening.

I sank onto the couch across from him and put my face in my hands.

"I'm going to fail my exam," I said into my palms.

He didn't respond to that.

Which was somehow the most terrifying thing yet